A sick-nurse of experience in charms and nostrums, the lady Fitnah always quickened to the scent of illness and adored the sufferer. From a creature hardly to be named by modest lips, the wife of Yûsuf was become the apple of her eye Having sent an order for the carriage, she went through her store of medicines, discoursing wisely to the other ladies; while Ghandûr, retiring, heard from the attendant eunuch:

“Thou hast done it! We had word of this; Sawwâb was summoned. But the command was, not to tell the ladies.”

He could only shrug.

Illness, like death and birth, was woman’s great occasion, when, guarding the traditions, she stood forth as priestess. The whole harem was in a flutter of excitement.

“Gulbeyzah must come with us,” pronounced Fitnah Khânum, “because our poor sick darling always loved her.”