The Consul-General looked down at her for a moment in silence, and his drooping lower lip trembled. Then, with a gesture of impatience, he said—
"Get away to your room at once," and opening the door for her he closed and locked it when she was gone.
But the momentary spasm of tenderness towards Gordon which had come to the Consul-General at sight of the foster-mother's love disappeared at the next instant. The only excuse he could find for his son's conduct in duping his ignorant Egyptian nurse was that perhaps he had himself been duped.
After the first plans had been formed in Khartoum and Helena's letter had been dispatched, the "fanatic-hypocrite" had probably discovered that his intrigue had become known in Cairo. Then he had put Gordon into the gap, and Gordon had been so simple, so innocent, so stupid as to be deceived! There was small comfort in this reading of the riddle, and the Consul-General's fury and shame increased tenfold.
"Fool! Fool! Fool," he thought, and taking from the mantelpiece the portrait of the boy in the Arab fez, he looked at it for a moment and then flung it back impatiently. It fell to the floor.
Some minutes passed in which the infuriated man was unconscious of his surroundings, for great anger wipes out time and place, and then he became aware that there was a knock at the door of his room.
"Who's there?" he cried.
It was Ibrahim. He had come to tell his Excellency that two reporters from Reuter's Agency were below by appointment and wished to hear what his Excellency had to give them.
"Nothing. Send them away," said the Consul-General.
A moment afterwards there was another knock at the door.