She established a class of her own for special riding lessons, to which she invited a chosen few; she secretly trained the least gentle of the mares to buck and rear at the word “Oporto”; she lured Maria Oporto on to the beast’s back and put the girl through half an hour which nearly proved her end.
“It’s a pity you can’t stick on!” she cried scornfully when the Portuguese fell at her feet in a sitting position and with a most resounding thud. “You might learn to ride if you did. The mare’s wonderful and beautiful and the dearest darling in the world, but you’ll never, never, _never_ ride, you couldn’t, you’re a sack of potatoes, that’s what you are, a sack of potatoes.”
The first shoot of the poisonous weed of revenge rooted in her heart.
Little by little she changed outwardly, until Amelia and Jane Cruikshanks came to look upon her as one of their best pupils, plus a millionaire in the way of a father.
“How beautifully she sits, and walks, and behaves at table,” said Amelia to Jane as they watched Zarah in the grounds one morning in the middle of her last term. “What a credit to us when she goes with the elder girls to a theatre or a dance. How attractive to the opposite sex——”
“And yet, how dignified, almost scornful!”
“How beautiful in her European clothes, and how sweetly obedient in wearing them and in only smoking three times a day, and then in the seclusion of her bedroom.”
“Yes! But I am glad we allowed her to wear her native dress every morning when she rides by herself on the Midan before anyone is about. One cannot be too severe with an opening little heart like hers.”
“We shall be simply lost without her—how quick she is in her studies—how generous——”
“Yes, indeed. Did you know that she found little Cissie Jenkins in tears this morning and gave her a silver bracelet and a big box of Turkish delight to comfort her?”
She had struck the child for no cause whatever, in a sudden flash of the cruelty which had earned her her nickname, even amongst her father’s savage followers, and which deep down, lay dormant, fierce and terrible, under the veneer of breeding with which the deluded little school-mistresses had plastered her. She had bribed the child to silence with gifts, whilst longing to strike the podgy little face again; she craved for the end of the term when she could tear the stifling European clothes from her, eat with her fingers, sit cross-legged, and smoke all day long if she so pleased.