‘Well, well, let us consult together,’ said Eva, ‘reproaches are barren.’
‘Ah! Eva,’ said Fakredeen, ‘I am not reproaching you; but if, the evening I was at Bethany, you had only told me that you had just parted with this Englishman, all this would not have occurred.’
‘How do you know that I had then just parted with this Englishman?’ said Eva, colouring and confused.
‘Because I marked him on the road. I little thought then that he had been in your retreat. I took him for some Frank, looking after the tomb of Lazarus.’
‘I found him in my garden,’ said Eva, not entirely at her ease, ‘and sent my attendants to him.’
Fakredeen was walking up and down the tent, and seemed lost in thought. Suddenly he stopped and said, ‘I see it all; I have a combination that will put all right.’
‘See, the day after to-morrow I have appointed to meet a friend of mine at Gaza, who has a caravan that wants convoy through the desert to the mountain. The Sheikh of Sheikhs shall have it. It will be as good as ten thousand piastres. That will be honey in his mouth. He will forget the past, and our English friend can return with you and me to El Khuds.’
‘I shall not return to El Khuds,’ said Eva. ‘The great Sheikh will convoy me to Damascus, where I shall remain till I go to Aleppo.’
‘May you never reach Aleppo!’ said Fakredeen, with a clouded countenance, for Eva in fact alluded to her approaching marriage with her cousin.
‘But after all,’ resumed Eva, wishing to change the current of his thoughts, ‘all these arrangements, so far as I am interested, depend upon the success of my mission to the great Sheikh. If he will not release my father’s charge, the spears of his people will never guard me again. And I see little prospect of my success; nor do I think ten thousand piastres, however honestly gained, will be more tempting than the inclination to oblige our house.’
‘Ten thousand piastres is not much,’ said Fakredeen. ‘I give it every three months for interest to a little Copt at Beiroot, whose property I will confiscate the moment I have the government of the country in my hands. But then I only add my ten thousand piastres to the amount of my debt. Ten thousand piastres in coin are a very different affair. They will jingle in the great Sheikh’s purse. His people will think he has got the treasure of Solomon. It will do; he will give them all a gold kaireen apiece, and they will braid them in their girls’ hair.’