Page:A child of the Orient (IA childoforient00vakarich).pdf/241

 We both stared at her in amazement.

"Hullo, Blossom," she said to me. "Sorry to have left you alone all day."

She elaborately ignored her husband. After an instant's stupefaction he strode across the room, took her chin in his hand, and lifted her face.

"Where have you been?" he demanded.

She snatched her head away from his hand, and dropped him an extravagant French curtsy. "Where I pleased, my master."

The man was shaking with anger.

"How did you get in?"

She waved her gloved hand towards the hall. "Ring the bell—call in your servants—find out."

"To make a bigger fool of myself?"

"Why not, since you were willing to belittle me before them, by your silly orders this morning? You told the eunuch not to let me go out, and when I returned, I had to use a ruse to enter my own home, where my baby boy is. You are a brute and a jealous fiend, and I am the most unhappy of wives," and thereupon she burst into the most pathetic sobbing, and threw herself upon me, holding me fast to her.

"Why, Beauty," he expostulated in tender tones, "you know I have never been unkind to you, and this is the first time I have even thought of punishing you."

She continued to sob without abatement. He