“Must you go?” whispered Lady Haigh, hoarsely, as she held his hand.
“I must,” he said. “If I should escape, Sir Dugald’s work will have been completed. You will like to remember that.”
“I shall ride to the Palace with you,” said Dick, as they went down the steps.
“It will be just as well, for you will be able to escort Miss Keeling back. It would be a pity for them to keep her in their hands after all.”
Another interruption met them as they emerged from the archway into the outer court. Waiting for them there, with his hand lifted to the salute, was old Ismail Bakhsh the gatekeeper, a former trooper of the Khemistan Horse, the celebrated force to which Dick was attached, and which had been raised in the first instance by Georgia’s father, General Keeling.
“Will my lord tell his servant,” he asked Stratford, “whether it is true what they are saying among the servant-people, that my lord goes to the Palace to give his life for the doctor lady’s?”
“It is true,” answered Stratford.
“Let my lord listen to his servant, for it is not fitting that my lord should accept death for the sake of one who has no claim on him. I served for ten years under Sinjāj Kīlin the general, and I will go in my lord’s place, because I have eaten of Sinjāj Kīlin’s salt, and it is not right that his daughter should come to shame or harm while Ismail Bakhsh lives.”
“Your loyalty to your old general is only what I should have expected from you, Ismail Bakhsh, but the King demands my presence, and not another’s.”
“But would my lord sacrifice himself for a woman—and that woman not even of his house?”