"It is perhaps the saddest fact of death in this Eastern climate that burial follows so closely after it. As there seems to be no sufficient reason to believe that the General’s death has been due to any but natural causes, it will probably be to-morrow—I say it will probably——" "Sufficient!" said Helena, and, with a new poison at her heart, she hurried away to her father’s room. She found the General where they had placed him, on his own bed and in his uniform. His eyes were now closed, his features were composed, and everything about him was suggestive of a peaceful end. While she was standing in the gloomy, echoless chamber, the Consul-General came in and stood beside her. Though he faintly simulated his natural composure he was deeply shaken. For a moment he looked down at his dead friend in silence, while his eyelids blinked and his lips trembled. Then he took Helena’s hand, and drawing her aside, he said— "This is a blow to all of us, my child, but to you it is a great and terrible one." She did not reply, but stood with her dry eyes looking straight before her. "I have made strict inquiry, and I am satisfied—entirely satisfied—that your father died by the visitation of God." Still she did not speak, and after a moment he spoke again. "It is true that the man Ishmael Ameer was the last to be with him, but what happened at their interview it would be useless to ask—dangerous, perhaps, in the present state of public feeling." She listened with complete self-possession and strong hold of her feelings, though her bosom heaved and her breathing was audible. "So let us put away painful thoughts, Helena. After all, your father’s end was an enviable one, and harder for us than for him, you know." He looked steadily for a moment at her averted face and then said, in a husky voice— "I’m sorry Lady Nuneham is so much of an invalid that she cannot come to see you. This is the moment when a mother——" He stopped without finishing what he had intended to say, and then he said— "I’m still more sorry that one who——" Again he stopped, and then in a low, smothered, scarcely audible voice, he said hurriedly— "But that is all over now. Good-night, my child! God help you!" Helena was standing where the Consul-General had left her, fighting hard against a fearful thought which had only vaguely taken shape in her mind, when the black boy came back with his mouth full of news. The bell of the telephone had rung furiously for the English lord, and he had gone away hurriedly, his horses galloping through the gate; there had been a riot at El Azhar; a boy had been shot; a hundred students had been killed with swords; the cavalry were clearing the streets, and the people were trooping in thousands into the great mosque of the Sultan Hakim, where the new prophet was preaching to them.