‘Precisely, your Excellency. I am much obliged to you.’
His only answer was a dignified bow; but he turned to a sub-officer who stood by him at attention and said, ‘On no account allow Lord Wheatley to be interrupted this evening. You will, of course, keep the sentries on guard behind and in front of the house, but do not let them intrude here.’
After giving his orders, the Pasha sat silent for some minutes. He had lighted his cigarette, and smoked it slowly. Then he let it out—a thing I had never seen him do before—lit another, and resumed his slow inhalings. I knew that he would speak before long, and after a few more moments he gave me the result of his meditations. We were now alone together.
‘It would have been much better,’ said he, ‘if that poor woman—whose fate I sincerely regret—had been let alone and this girl had died instead of her,’ and he nodded at me with convinced emphasis.
‘If Phroso had died!’ leapt from my lips in astonishment.
‘Yes, if Phroso had died. We would have hanged Constantine together, wept together over her grave, and each of us gone home with a sweet memory—you to your fiancée, I to my work. And we should have forgiven one another any little causes of reproach.’
To this speculation in might-have-beens I made no answer. The feelings with which I received it shewed me, had I still needed shewing, what Phroso was to me. I had been shocked and grieved at Francesca’s fate; but rather that a thousand times than the thing on which Mouraki coolly mused!
‘It would have been much better, so much better,’ he repeated, with a curiously regretful intonation.
‘The only thing that would be better, to my thinking,’ I said, ‘is that you should behave as an honourable man and leave this lady free to do as she wishes.’