“It is not easy, mademoiselle, to find ladies of other nationalities who combine the necessary qualifications. A Frenchwoman might have been obtained, but after what I have told you, you will not be surprised to hear that his Excellency would not allow a French person to enter the palace, much less to have the charge of his son. For the English, on the contrary, he has the highest admiration, and would have liked to send the Bey to be educated at one of your great public schools. The desire, however, of keeping him under his own eye, and the fear of a repetition of his experience with Mahmoud Bey, induces him to prefer this method, if it can be found practicable.”
Shortly after this Denarien Bey took his departure, after again expressing his earnest hope that Cecil would see her way clear to accepting the post offered her. When he was gone, Lady Haigh rose.
“Come, Marian,” she said to Miss Arbuthnot, “you and I are going to do our shopping. You promised me the whole day, you know. Cecil is going to sit down and write a glowing description of the situation the Pasha offers her to her father, and say how much she longs to take it.”
“But I don’t in the least think that papa will let me go, Lady Haigh,” said Cecil, waiving the remark about her personal wishes.
“If he won’t, he is a much more foolish man than I think him,” replied Lady Haigh, in her most uncompromising manner; “and I shall consider it my duty to write him an urgent letter of remonstrance.”
“When you go back, Lady Haigh,” asked Cecil, suddenly, “shall you go to Beyrout and Damascus and then across the desert to Baghdad?”
“When we go back, my dear Cecil,” corrected Lady Haigh, impressively, “we shall go by the P. & O. to Karachi, then by another steamer to Basra, and then by another to Baghdad. I am not an adventurous young lady disposed to be sentimental over Bedouin wanderers, and I have no wish to go through unnecessary hardships, nor yet to be captured by insurgent Arabs and held to ransom, and so I fear that you will have to be content to accompany the steady-going old woman by this humdrum route.”
“But I am quite sure that papa will never let me go,” repeated Cecil, confidently, with a sigh that was not all of sadness.
For æsthetic reasons she would be sorry not to see Baghdad, but everything else seemed to combine to make her dread going there. She was so strongly convinced that her father would share her feelings, that she gave herself a great deal of trouble in trying to compose a letter to him which should be scrupulously fair, and place all the advantages of the situation in their proper light. The letter once written and sent off, she felt quite at ease in her mind, and was even disposed to mourn gently over the chance she was losing. It was Miss Arbuthnot, and not Cecil, who betrayed excitement when Mr Anstruther’s answer arrived, and waited with bated breath whilst it was opened.
“I am sure he won’t let me go, Miss Arbuthnot,” Cecil had said, smiling, as she took up the envelope; but on glancing through the letter she uttered a cry, and looked up with a piteous face of dismay.