"Thus it came about that Prince Hasan, superbly mounted and dressed in a suit of fine chain armour beneath his upper silken garments, rode forth from the valley where he had been reared, accompanied by the tearful blessings of his father and mother.
"A year passed, and then Mirza Shah himself, summoned by special messenger, departed on a visit to the Court at Agra. When two months later he returned, never did I know such a change to have been wrought in so brief a time on any man. He was grey and haggard; his eyes were sunken. And to me he came almost first of all in the palace, to consult the stars.
"And for my better guidance he told me some things. Prince Hasan had fallen into ways of dissipation and habits of drunkenness--most accursed of vices--in the city of Agra. It was in the hope of reclaiming him that an old friend had called Mirza Shah to the capital. But at the meeting of father and son, instead of repentance on the part of the misguided youth, there had been defiance and revilement, and at last, as the father confessed to me, with the tremor of shame in his voice, an insulting blow in the face. This was too much to endure. Mirza Shah had disowned his son. He declared he was henceforth childless, for, perhaps as I have told you, there had been no other babe born all these years to the sultana.
"Even now did I conceal my guilty knowledge, though well I knew that the inexorable scroll of destiny was beginning to unfold itself. In fact, I was afraid to speak, for Mirza Shah had challenged me straightway to show a flaw in the happy horoscope I had drawn. And flaw in the emblazoned scroll there was none that I could lay finger on; only in my secret heart was the one sinister line traced--surely traced, as I remorsefully reflected.
"For months thereafter Mirza Shah kept away from me--I knew that his faith in the stars or in my skill to interpret them aright had been shaken. But I held my place and kept to the even tenor of my ways, for I had resolved that, if ever Prince Hasan should return home, then assuredly would I be on hand to warn Mirza Shah, so that, the crisis approaching, steps might at least be tried to avert the blow of destiny. Of this I was determined, even though death itself would come to me as the penalty of my long silence.