He sat down and dashed off a brief reply in an assumed hand.
"All the gold in Africa will not buy my vengeance from me.
Casim Ammeh."
His answer reached Pansy with her dinner, reducing her to despair.
It seemed that nothing she could do would have any influence with this savage ruler.
Hopeless days followed; days that brought her nothing but a series of elaborate meals. Yet she knew that life went on around her; a life quite different from any she had been accustomed to.
Morning and night she heard faint voices wailing from unseen minarets. Over the high walls of her garden came the hum of a crowded city. From her screened gallery she saw camel trains loom out of the haze of distance to El-Ammeh, with a wrangle of sweet bells; camels that came from some vast unknown.
And there was another sound that Pansy heard; a sound that hailed from somewhere within the Palace; that always came about bedtime, and always set her shivering; the sound of a girl screaming.
Each morning with her early tea there was a basket of rare flowers, flowers she did not trouble to tell Alice to move now; she put them down to some palace custom, nothing that had any bearing on the Sultan. She never thought of Le Breton's words:
"Still only a few flowers, Pansy?"