What had happened? She could only suppose that her father had been overcome by that wealth of the general's on which he had made her such a speech. Or perhaps his dislike of Hamdi had been founded on nothing but resentment of Hamdi's airs of superiority, and now that the bey was condescending to ask for her hand her father's flattered appeasement was rushing into genial acceptance.
Anything might be possible to Tewfick Pasha's eternally youthful enthusiasms.
She told her frightened heart that she was not afraid.... Her father would never really fail her.... And she would never surrender to this degradation; for all her fright and all her flinching from defiance she divined in herself some hidden stuff of resistance, tenacious to endure ... some strain of daring which had made her brave that wild escapade to-night.
Was it still the same night? Were the violins still playing, the people still dancing in their fairy land of freedom?... Was that young man in the Highland dress, that unknown American, was he back there dancing with some other girl?
What was it he had said? To-morrow night, and another night, he would be there in the lane.... If she would come! As if she would demean herself, after his rude affront, to steal again to the gate, like a gardener's daughter—!
Her thoughts were so full of him. And now she had this new horror to face, this marriage to Hamdi Bey. Did her father dream that she would not resist? It was against such a danger that she had long ago stolen a garden key, a key to the outer world in which she had neither a friend nor a piaster to save her....
"My dear father," she said entreatingly, "please do not tell me that you really mean—that you really think you would like to—that you would consider—this man—"
He turned on her a suddenly direct, confessing look.
"Aimée, I have arranged this matter."
He added heavily, "To-night. That is what I came to tell you."