"I quite know what I said," retorted Kettle grimly. "I didn't approve of your way. But this is different. You're not a very fine specimen, but anyway you're English, and it does good to the old shop at home to have English people for kings and queens of foreign countries. I've got a theory about that."
"I'm a British subject".
Now the Lady Emir was not listening to all this tirade by any means unmoved. To begin with, it was not etiquette to speak at all in her presence if unaddressed, and to go on with, although she did not understand one word in ten of what was being spoken, she gathered the gist of it, and this did not tend to compose her. She threw away the snaky stem of water-pipe, and gripped both hands on the trooper's sword, till the muscles stood out in high relief.
"Do you say," she demanded, "you onwilling marry me?"
"Yes," said Wenlock, with sullen emphasis.
She turned her head, and gave orders in Arabic. With marvellous readiness, as though it was one of the regular appointments of the place, a couple of the guards trundled a stained-wooden block into the middle of the floor, another took his station beside it with an ominous-looking axe poised over his shoulder, and almost before Wenlock knew what was happening, he was pinned by a dozen men at wrist and ankle, and thrust down to kneel "with his neck over the block.
"Do you say," the Lady Emir repeated, "you onwilling marry me?"
"I'm a British subject," Wenlock shouted. "I've a Foreign Office passport in my pocket. I'll appeal to my Government over this."