Soon after his return from the mosque, the bridegroom leaves his friends in a lower apartment, enjoying their pipes and coffee and sherbet. The bride’s mother and sister, or whatever other female relations were left with her, are above; and the bride herself, and the belláneh, in a separate apartment.[294] If the bridegroom be a youth or young man, it is considered proper that he, as well as the bride, should exhibit some degree of bashfulness: one of his friends, therefore, carries him a part of the way up to the hareem. On entering the bride’s apartment, he gives a present to the belláneh, and she retires. The bride has a shawl thrown over her head; and the bridegroom must give her a present of money, which is called “the price of the uncovering of the face,” before he attempts to remove this, which she does not allow him to do without some apparent reluctance, if not violent resistance, in order to show her maiden modesty. On removing the covering, he says, “In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful;” and then greets her with this compliment: “The night be blessed,” or “—is blessed:” to which she replies, if timidity do not choke her utterance, “God bless thee.” The bridegroom now sees the face of his bride for the first time, and generally finds her nearly what he has been led to expect. He remains with her but a few minutes longer:[295] having satisfied his curiosity respecting her personal charms, he calls to the women (who generally collect at the door, where they wait in anxious suspense) to raise their cries of joy, or zagháreet: and the shrill sounds acquaint the persons below and in the neighbourhood, and often, responded by other women, spread still further the news, that he has acknowledged himself satisfied with his bride: he soon afterwards descends to rejoin his friends, and remains with them an hour, or more, before he returns to his wife. It very seldom happens that the husband, if disappointed in his bride, immediately disgraces and divorces her; in general, he retains her, in this case, a week or more. Having now described the most usual manner in which the marriages of virgin-brides are conducted in Cairo, I may add a few words on some of the ceremonies observed in other cases of matrimony, both of virgins and of widows or divorced women. The daughters of the great, generally having baths in their own houses, seldom go to the public bath previously to marriage. A bride of a wealthy family, and her female relations and friends, if there be not a bath in her house, go to the public bath, which is hired for them exclusively, and to the bridegroom’s house, without music or canopy, mounted on asses: the bride herself generally wearing a Kashmeer shawl, in the manner of a habarah.