As Barakah, caressed by all of them, received this outpour, her feeling of homecoming was complete. And when she came to her own gilded salon⁠—the same where she had sipped the poison which seemed now a dream⁠—there was a slave-girl of Murjânah Khânum’s waiting to conduct her to the bath, with a present of rare flowers and fruit, and a robe of honour which she was to don, when she had rested, for supper in Murjânah Khânum’s rooms, where all the ladies were invited to meet her.

The ladies, having voided their own news, desired a full account of Paris and her doings. “Inshallah, thou wast happy there!” they all exclaimed. When she replied, “My happiness is here with you,” the answer gave unbounded satisfaction. From their remarks she learnt, to her no small amazement, that Hâfiz Bey was the son of her old friend Amînah Khânum.

“Thou didst not know?” they cried. “How can that be? And Bedr-ul-Budûr⁠—surely thou hast heard of her⁠—the slave whose beauty the Princess was always vaunting? It is very strange!”