"Well, my moon, my sweet, my beauty, if he doesn't want to live a little longer after he has seen you in that, he's not fit to be alive!"
But at the last moment Helena called for a thick dark veil.
"I've no right to sap away his courage," she said; and the Princess, who had heard everything that Helena had to tell, and had swung round to Gordon's side entirely, could say no more.
Hafiz came to take the ladies to the Citadel, and as he was leaving them at the gate to go to Gordon in his quarters, Helena gave him the letter she had written at Sakkara.
"Tell him I mean all I say—every word of it," she whispered.
The Court-Martial was held in one of the rooms of the palace of Mohammed Ali—up a wide stone staircase across a bare court, through a groined archway, beyond a great hall which in former days had seen vast assemblies, and past a door labelled "Minister of War," into a gorgeously decorated chamber, overlooking a garden with its patch of green shut in by high stone walls. It had once been the harem of the great Pasha.
The room was already full when Helena and the Princess arrived, but places were found for them near the door. This position suited Helena perfectly, but to the Princess it was a deep disappointment, and as a consequence nothing pleased her.
"All English and all soldiers! Not an Egyptian among them," she said. "After what he has done for them, too! Ingrates! Excuse the word. That's what I call them."
At that moment Hafiz entered, and the Princess, touching him on the arm, said—
"Here, you come and sit on the other side of her and keep up her heart, the sweet one."