And each evening she sat in the dim, scented room and waited for those muffled screams. She knew where they came from now; from somewhere behind one of the locked doors leading into her room.
Limp and listless, she dragged through the hot, monotonous days, brooding on her own fate and her father's, envying the ragged black crows that flew, free, like bits of burnt paper, high in the scorching sky.
Pansy had been about a fortnight in El-Ammeh, when something happened.
One morning, as she stood by the sunken pond, feeding the greedy carp with rolls she was too miserable to eat, Alice came to her round-eyed and startled-looking.
"Oh, Miss Pansy, dey hab come for you," she gasped
"Who?" Pansy asked quickly.
"De Sultan's soldiers."
"Are they going to take me to him?" she asked, feeling the interview she desired and dreaded was now at hand.
"Dey take you to de slave market. To be sold. Oh, oh!" the girl wailed.
Alice's hysterical sobs followed Pansy down the dim passage some minutes later, when, with strained face and tortured eyes, she went with a guard of eight Arab soldiers to meet the fate the Sultan Casim Ammeh had promised for her more than sixteen years before.