"Don't you love him?" Rayma exclaimed.
"I hate him," Pansy said, lying to her heart. "I never want to see him again," she went on in a hysterical way. "I only want to escape from him and this place, once and for ever."
Astonished, Rayma gazed at her supplanter. Then a look of hope darted into her dark eyes.
If only this strange girl were out of the way, the Sultan's heart might return to her.
CHAPTER XXVII
Outside a little French military settlement several ragged tents had been pitched. In the largest of them the miser feather merchant was sitting, cross-legged, on a pile of dirty cushions. As chance would have it, his caravan had gone to the south-west, and that night he had halted within three hundred miles of St. Louis.
With him was an Arab friend, a nomad like himself, who chanced also to be encamped outside the little settlement. A year had passed since their last meeting. After the first exchange of compliments, as the two sat smoking together, the new-comer remarked to the miser:
"In your hunger for gold you grow ever thinner and more haggard."
A wild look came into the feather merchant's eyes.