“Yes, but where are you going to run to?”
“To seed,” Muriel replied, with a little laugh. “I can’t help it. He’s won: I can’t stay away from him. I’m going to have this fortnight with him, if I hang for it!”
“Oh, you’re mad!” exclaimed Kate, and, clutching hold of Muriel’s arm, she led her into her tent.
Here they argued the matter to and fro; but it was apparent from the first that the thing was irrevocably sealed, and that all the details of the plan had been thought out so as to prevent the adventure becoming public.
“Very possibly there’ll be no scandal at all,” said Muriel; “the natives can be bribed not to tell. I shall come back with you to Cairo when you return there, and who is going to give me away?”
“But what is a fortnight?” asked Kate, in despair. “Good God!—what is a fortnight, when it means even the possible ruin of your whole life?”
“I can’t look so far ahead,” Muriel replied. “I only know I want him now. And I’m going to him, Kate; I’m going to the man I love, the man who loves me!”
She ran out of the tent, calling to her dragoman, Mustafa, who appeared at once from the domestic quarters. He received the news without perturbation.
“Yes, my leddy,” he said. “I varry pleased. My wife’s brother him live at El Hamrân. Thirty mile’—it is nudding: five, six hours riding; and the road him varry good, varry straight.”
She told him to get two camels ready at once, to fill the water-bottles, collect a few eatables, and—to hold his tongue. “I have to take some important papers over to Mr. Lane,” she said, and he smiled at the lie.