In consideration of Colonel Lord's distinguished record as a soldier and his unblemished character as a man; out of regard to the obvious purity of his intentions and the undoubted fact that the order he disobeyed had led to irreparable results; remembering the great provocation he had received and not forgetting the valuable services rendered by his father to England and to Egypt, the King had been graciously pleased to grant him a free pardon under the Great Seal!
This coming first as a private message from the head of the War Office, threw the Sirdar into an ecstasy of joy. He called up the Consul-General immediately, and repeated the glad words over the telephone, but no answer came back to him except the old man's audible breathing as it quivered over the wires.
Then he thought of Helena, but with a soldier's terror of tears in the eyes of a woman, even tears of joy, he decided to let Hafiz carry the news to her.
"Tell her to go up to the Citadel and break the good tidings to Gordon," he said, speaking to Egyptian headquarters.
Nothing loath, Hafiz went bounding along to the house of the Princess and blurted out his big message, expecting that it would be received with cries of delight, but to his bewilderment, Helena heard it with fear and trembling, and, becoming weak and womanish all at once, she seemed to be about to faint.
Hafiz, with proper masculine simplicity, became alarmed at this, but the Princess began to laugh.
"What!" she cried. "You that have been as brave as a lion with her cub while your man's life has been in danger, to go mooing now—now—like a cow with a sick calf!"
Helena recovered herself after a moment, and then Hafiz delivered the Sirdar's mandate, that she was to go up to the Citadel and break the good news to Gordon.
"But I daren't, I daren't," she said, still trembling.
"What!" cried the Princess again. "Not go and get the kisses and hugs that ... Well, what a dunce I was to have that silver grey of yours made so tight about the waist! For two pins I would put on your black veil and go up myself and take all the young man has to give a woman."