Now, as the gold-and-crimson twenty-six-oared State caïque with the gilded whorl and the preening peacock at the prow, shot up-stream towards Therapia, Cardillon laughed, and said to the middle-aged handsome woman who sat near, the diamonds on her white hands flashing in the sunlight as she stitched at a masculine garment of coarse white calico....
“You haven’t asked how my audience went off, Lady Stratclyffe?”
“I had forgotten,” she answered, “but I presume nothing new or original was said or done, and that you were dismissed with the customary compliments?”
His laugh, rather sharp and hard, rang out again clearly. People were listening, and his white teeth gleamed in rather a self-conscious smile.
After the usual stage-wait—filled up with coffee and chibuks—we found his Sublimity at the top of a long crystal staircase, illuminated with red glass lusters. The Shadow of Omnipotence took exception to the condition of my toggery. He said to Prince Galamaki, who presented me: “Mâshallah! but the infidel’s clothes are torn and filthy! Does the Queen of England pay her Pashas so badly that they cannot afford to buy new uniforms?”
There was a burst of laughter, masculine and feminine. He went on, in the dandified drawl, pulling at his bushy whiskers with the free unbandaged hand:
“Galamaki—who had the honor of meeting you at Petersburg, Lady Stratclyffe—and who had attended to make his bow prior to leaving for the Embassy at Vienna, looked civilly agonized, not having mentioned to the Padishah that I understand Turkish pretty well. So I said, in that language, that in England we considered that the uniform of a soldier who had seen Service was his robe of honor. And that I had dressed to wait upon the Sultan as I should dress to wait upon the Queen!”
There were “bravos” and the clapping of hands. Faces of both sexes turned towards the speaker; and though he hid his pride and exultation at the homage under an affectation of cynical indifference, it expanded his sharply-cut nostril and burned in his light hazel eyes. He went on:
“Though the look of some of these fellows we’re waiting for might scare her....”