Seating himself at her side, he stayed watching her, tenderness on his cruel face, for the first time having pity on her weakness. The weakness of the woman who had given him the one thing his savage heart craved for, and which, until now, had been denied him—a son.
CHAPTER III
By the time Annette knew enough Arabic to make herself understood, and to understand what was said around her, she realized that if the Sultan learnt her boy was not his, this one joy of her tragic life would be taken from her. He would murder the son as he had murdered the father.
As the baby grew, her one idea was to keep its true parentage from her savage captor. If she could have done so, she would have kept his dark, blood-stained hands from touching her son. But this was impossible. When in El-Ammeh, the Sultan came every day to see the child, often sitting with it in his arms, watching it with an air of proud possession.
And fearsomely Annette would watch him, wondering why he never suspected. But he was too eaten up with his own desire for a son ever to give a thought to her dead husband.
The baby was given the name of Casim Ammeh. But Annette always called her boy by another name, "Raoul Le Breton."
And at the age of five he said to her:
"Why do you always call me 'Raoul,' not 'Casim,' as my father does?"
His father!