Eight hundred thousand pounds!
In a week Dimsdale was at work again. In another month he was at Cairo, and the night after his arrival he attended a ball at the Khedive's Palace. To Fielding Bey he poured out the wonder of his soul at the chance that had been given him at last. He seemed to think it was his own indomitable patience, the work that he had done, and his reports, which had at last shamed the Egyptian Government and the Caisse de la Dette into doing the right thing for the country and to him.
He was dumfounded when Fielding replied: "Not much, my Belisarius. As Imshi Pasha always was, so he will be to the end. It wasn't Imshi Pasha, and it wasn't English influence, and it wasn't the Caisse de la Dette, each by its lonesome, or all together by initiative."
"What was it—who was it, then?" inquired Dimsdale breathlessly. "Was it you?—I know you've worked for me. It wasn't backsheesh anyhow. But Imshi Pasha didn't turn honest and patriotic for nothing—I know that."
Fielding, who had known him all his life, looked at him curiously for a moment, and then, in a far-away, sort of voice, made recitative:
"'Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray,
And when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day
The solitary child.'"
Dimsdale gasped. "Lucy Gray!" he said falteringly.
Fielding nodded. "You didn't know, of course. She's been here for six months—has more influence than the whole diplomatic corps. Twists old Imshi Pasha round her little finger. She has played your game handsomely—I've been in her confidence. Wordsworth was wrong when he wrote:
"'No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor:
The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door—'
For my wife's been her comrade. And her mate—would you like to know her mate? She's married, you know."