"I expect to get further information from Hafiz to-morrow, so (D.V.) I'll write my last letter to Bedrasheen, where, as I hear, you are to encamp. Look out for it there—I see something I may want you to do for me with Ishmael. Meantime don't be afraid of him. Remember that you belong to me, to me only, and that I'm thinking of you every hour and minute, and then nothing can go seriously astray. Good-bye, my beloved, my dear, my darling! GORDON.
"P.S.—Is it not extraordinary, my dear Helena, that notwithstanding the torment I suffer at the thought of your position in Ishmael's camp I continue to ask you to remain in it? But wait—only wait! Something good is going to happen! In-sha-allah!"
CHAPTER XI
I
"THE NILE
"(between Luxor and Bedrasheen).
"MY DEAR, DEAR GORDON—I saw your Hamid Ibrahim the moment I set foot in Luxor, and the way he passed your letter to me and I passed mine to him would have done credit to Charlie Bates and the Artful Dodger in the art of passing 'a wipe.'
"I really think we escaped the eyes of this odious Arab woman, but I am bound to add that almost as soon as I got back to the boat, and began to read your letter and to weep tears of joy over it, I was conscious of a shadow at the mouth of my cabin, and it was she, the daughter of a dog!
"No matter! Who the dickens cares! I shall be gone from here before the woman can do me any mischief, and if I am still in Ishmael's camp it is only because you said you were sending your last letter to Bedrasheen, so, you see, I had no choice but to come on.
"What you tell me of the course of affairs in Cairo only fills me with hatred of the Grand Cadi ('whom Allah damn'), and I find that I exhaust my Christianity in finding names that seem suitable to 'his Serenity'—beginning, of course, with the fourth letter of the English alphabet.
"I see already what you are going to do, and when I think of it I feel like a shocking coward. If you cannot work with the Consul-General I suppose you will work without him, perhaps against him, and a conflict between you and your father is the tragedy I always foresaw. It will be the end of one or both of you, and I am trembling at the bare thought.