Whip in hand, Muhammad Pasha crossed a courtyard and entered a small room remote from others.
“Bring Fitnah Khânum hither secretly!” he told the eunuchs.
Sawwâb, the fat, was seized with trembling; while Meymûn, a tall, gaunt creature, gave a deathlike grin. They sped, however. Three minutes had not passed before the lady Fitnah, deftly bound and gagged, was borne into the lonely chamber and the door was shut.
Half an hour later, Muhammad Pasha Sâlih sat conversing with the English lady, preparing her intelligence to meet the Consul’s arguments, which he forewarned her would be all misstatements born of blind fanaticism. When married to Yûsuf, he assured her, and himself believed it, she would hardly know the difference from an English home.
CHAPTER IV
The English girl, meanwhile, experienced a passionate elation, like new life. The Pasha’s exhortations were not needed. Rebellion, which had always lurked beneath her trained subservience, now clothed her in its flames and made her terrible for any one who dared assail her new-found pride.
What had she to regret? From childhood she had been repressed, humiliated, and ordered to be thankful for bare daily bread. In Christian families her lot had been unenviable. Here, in this Muslim household, she was somebody. The month spent here had been the happiest in her life. But, bred up to regard employers as a race apart,—impressed, moreover, by the grandeur of the house and by the rank of Pasha,—she had never dreamt of being thought an equal by her entertainers. When Yûsuf Bey, whom she had noticed for his beauty, assailed her in the hall, she had imagined his intentions far from honourable, judging from past experience in English houses. She had fled to her own rooms, ashamed and angry, while the image of his face alight with passion remained to trouble her against her will. When the Pasha came and begged her in most flattering terms to condescend to marry his unworthy son, she nearly swooned. All her resistance sprang from incredulity. When once convinced that the demand was earnest, she gave way with grateful tears. Then her resolve became a living faith. It was to break the bondage of the past completely, to cast in her lot for ever with these friends who wanted her.