That night she could fix her mind on nothing except the horror of her position, but next morning she set herself to think out schemes for stopping the consequences of her own act.
The black boy was gone; it was not possible to overtake him; there was no other train to Egypt for four days, but there was the telegraph—she could make use of that.
"I’ll telegraph to the Consul-General to pay no attention to my letter," she thought.
Useless! The Consul-General would ask himself searching questions and take his precautions just the same.
"I’ll telegraph that my letter is a forgery," she thought.
Madness! The Consul-General would ask himself how, if it was a forgery, she could know anything about it.
"I’ll go across to the Sirdar and tell him everything, and leave him to act for both of us as he thinks best!"
Impossible! How could she explain her position to the Sirdar without betraying Gordon’s identity and thereby leading to his arrest?
That settled everything. There was no escape from the consequences of her conduct, no way to put an end to the network of dangers by which she had surrounded Ishmael. Mosie was now far on his way to Cairo; he carried to the Consul-General not only her own letter but also the original of Ishmael’s letter to the Chancellor of El Azhar. The hideous work was done.
Two days passed, during which her over-excited feelings seemed to paralyse all her powers of thought. Then a new idea took possession of her, and she set herself to undo what she had done with Ishmael himself. Little by little, in tremulous tones, and with a still deeper sense of duplicity than before, she began to express halting doubts of the success of their enterprise.
"I have been thinking about it," she said nervously, "and now I fear——"
"What do you fear, O Rani?" asked Ishmael.
"I fear," said Helena, trembling visibly, "that the moment the Government learn from the Sirdar, as they needs must, that the great body of your people have left Khartoum, and are travelling north, they will recall the British army to protect the capital and thus——"
But Ishmael interrupted her with a laugh.
"If the day of the Redeemer has come," he said, "will human armies hinder him? No!"
It was useless! Ishmael was now more than ever an enthusiast, a fanatic, a visionary. His spiritual ecstasy swept away every obstacle, and made him blind to every danger.