‘Really I beg your pardon,’ said I. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘The matter?’ he cried in high good humour, or what seemed such. ‘The matter? Why, the matter, my dear Wheatley, is that you appear to be both a very discreet fellow and a very fortunate one.’
‘I don’t understand yet,’ said I, trying to hide my growing irritation.
‘Surely it’s no secret?’ he asked. ‘It is generally known, isn’t it?’
‘What’s generally known?’ I fairly roared in an exasperation that mastered all self-control.
The Pasha was not in the very least disturbed. He held a bundle of letters in his left hand and he began now to sort them. He ended by choosing one, which he held up before me, with a malicious humour twinkling from under his heavy brows.
‘I get behindhand in my correspondence when I’m on a voyage,’ said he. ‘This letter came to Rhodes about a week ago, together with a mass of public papers, and I have only this morning opened it. It concerns you.’
‘Concerns me? Pray, in what way?’
‘Or rather it mentions you.’
‘Who is it from?’ I asked. The man’s face was full of triumphant spite, and I grew uneasy.