There were details she would not have chosen in her cloistered life, but on the whole it was the happiest that she had ever known. She was waited on hand and foot who had known drudgery; her husband used her as a reigning beauty who, but a few weeks since, had been esteemed uninteresting. Then there were pleasures of society. The Pasha’s carriage often came, with one or other of the ladies and Gulbeyzah, to take her round to call on grand harems. She was received with favour by great ladies. One, a princess, by name Amînah Khânum, insisted on her spending a whole day alone with her.

This dame, though elderly, still dressed to charm. Her rooms were full of European furniture, but she herself sat always on a sofa, smoking a long, old-fashioned pipe with coral mouthpiece.

“You are not of the first rank in your own country,” she told Barakah to start with, bluntly; “or you would not be where you are. You do not know the people I have met in France and England, so don’t pretend you do. I value frankness.” It seemed she knew the English pretty thoroughly.