Chapter 35

Fanny Brassfield, whose country house was not far away, sometimes dropped in to see Lilla.

"Hello, David," she said, sitting down beside the tea table, and crossing her knees. "How's old Marco Polo to-day?"

Her bony cheeks were rosy from the cold wind; her green eyes glittered with health; and her whole countenance, under a tilted, putty-colored toque, expressed her full satisfaction with what she had found in life. She had no nerves, no remorse nor thwarted ambitions. Because of her wealth, unscrupulousness, and small imagination, her one constant craving--for novel experiences--was easily satisfied. A long cigarette holder between her thin lips, one putty-colored lisle stocking showing to the knee, she exhaled, together with an odor of Florentine orris-root, a ruthless vigor and appetency for pleasure. Lilla thought with envy of all this woman had never imagined nor felt, all that she had been able to enjoy without self-questioning.

How simple life was for some people!

"I'm giving a little party. No doubt it's useless to ask you----"

Fanny Brassfield interrupted herself to stare at Hamoud-bin-Said, who had entered the room without a sound.

He had on a long, dark-blue joho, or robe, embellished down its open front with a tracery of gold. Underneath he wore the kanzu, the under robe of fine white cotton, embroidered round the neck with a bit of red needlework, and reaching to his boots of soft, black leather. Bound his waist was a blue-and-gold sash, from which protruded the silver hilt of his J-shaped Zanzibar dagger. His head was covered, as always in the house, with a white embroidered skullcap. In one small hand he held a Venetian goblet, in the other a bottle of medicine.

It was the hour for Dr. Fallows' prescription.

"Really," Fanny Brassfield exclaimed, in her high-pitched, insolent voice, "I must get myself one of these--what is he again? Zanzibari?"

Hamoud, towering there in the attire of an Omân gentleman--which she took for a specially effective livery--contemplated the great Mrs. Brassfield. His full eyelids were dreamily lowered over his lustrous eyes. His long, straight nose seemed narrower than usual, perhaps from disdain. But his clear-cut carnelian mouth, vivid between his faint mustache and his delicate beard, did not change expression, although he was calling the great Mrs. Brassfield a female beneath the contempt of a Muscat slaver, the progeny of camels and alley dogs, and other names besides. As if regretfully he turned away to David Verne, measured out the solution of arsenic, and presented the goblet, a tapering treasure covered with gilt and crimson protuberances, an antique that had stood before men in the wave-lapped palaces of Venice, brimming with Greek wine, or maybe with Renaissance poison.

David Verne himself raised the goblet.

"Dr. Fallows has really done wonders, hasn't he?"

"Wonders," Lilla echoed with a smile.

In the hall, as she was leaving, Fanny Brassfield said to Lilla:

"By the way, Anna Zanidov is in town. She was asking after you."

Without moving, Lilla murmured slowly:

"Ah, she wants to tell my fortune again, perhaps?"

"She stopped doing that. It got too uncanny. You know yourself that everything she ever predicted came to pass. Including three deaths; that is, two besides----"

"One must believe that she sees it," Lilla assented, and, frozen by her thoughts, shuddered violently. "Yes, too uncanny! She did well to give it up."

"Especially as people were getting to be afraid of her," said Fanny Brassfield, while passing through the front doorway.