When we stood in its midst, shy looks askance from all the six betrayed their secret ambition; though Eive’s was but momentary, and so slight that I felt I might have unfairly suspected her of presumption.  I left this room, however, in silence, and assigned to each, of my maiden brides, in order as they had been presented to me, the rooms on the left; and then, as we stood once more in the peristyle, having postponed all further arrangements, all distribution of household duties, to the morrow (assigning, however, to Eunane, whose native energy and forwardness had made early acquaintance with the dwelling and its dumb inhabitants, the charge of providing and preparing with their assistance our morning meal), I said, “I have let the business of the evening zyda actually encroach on midnight, and must detain you from your rest no longer.  Eveena, you know, I still have need of you.”

She was standing at a little distance, next to Eunane; and the latter, with a smile half malicious, half triumphant, whispered something in her ear.  There was a suppressed annoyance in Eveena’s look which provoked me to interpose.  On Earth I should never have been fool enough to meddle in a woman’s quarrel.  The weakest can take her own part in the warfare of taunt and innuendo, better and more venomously than could dervish, priest, or politician.  But Eveena could no more lower herself to the ordinary level of feminine malice than I could have borne to hear her do so; and it was intolerable that one whose sweet humility commanded respect from myself should submit to slight or sneer from the lips and eyes of petulant girls.  Eunane started as I spoke, using that accent which gives its most peremptory force to the Martial imperative.  “Repeat aloud what you have chosen to say to Eveena in my presence.”

If the first to express the ill-will excited by Eveena’s evident influence, though exerted in their own behalf, it was less that Eunane surpassed her companions in malice than that they fell short of her in audacity.  Her school-mates had found her their most daring leader in mischief, the least reluctant scapegoat when mischief was to be atoned.  But she was cowed, partly perhaps by her first collision with masculine authority, partly, I fear, by sheer dread of physical force visibly greater than she had ever known by repute.  Perhaps she was too much frightened to obey.  At any rate, it was from Eveena, despite her pleading looks, that I extorted an answer.  She yielded at last only to that formal imperative which her conscience would not permit her to disobey, and which for the first time I now employed in addressing her.

“Eunane only repeated,” Eveena said, with a reluctance so manifest that one might have supposed her to be the offender, “a school-girl’s proverb:—­

 “’Ware the wrath that stands to cool: 
   Then the sandal shows the rule.’”