Then suddenly, in the delirium of her hatred of the Egyptian and the tragic tangle of her error, while she was standing alone in her desolate room, with the "Allah! Allah!" of Ishmael’s followers surging up from below, a new feeling—a feeling she had never felt before—stirred in the depths of her abased and outraged soul. "Shall I go back to England?" she asked herself. "Shall I?" *CHAPTER VII* As soon as Lord Nuneham reached the Agency he went up to his wife’s room. The sweet old lady was sitting in her dressing-gown with her face to the windows on the west, while the Egyptian woman was combing out her thin, white hair and binding it up for the night. The sun was gone, but the river and the sky were shining like molten gold, and a faint reflected glow was on her soft, pale cheeks. "Ah, is it you, John?" she said in a nervous voice, and while he was taking a seat she looked at him with her deep, slow, weary eyes as if waiting for an answer to a question she was afraid to ask. "Helena is going home, Janet," said the old man after a moment. "Poor girl!" "There is a steamship on Saturday. I thought it better she should sail by that." "Poor thing! Poor darling!" "Her will seems to be quite gone—she agrees to everything." "Poor Helena!" "I don’t think she has shed a tear since her father died. It is extraordinary. She startles me, almost frightens me. Either she is a girl of astonishing character, or else——" "She has had a great shock, poor child. Only yesterday at this hour her father was with her, and now——" "True—quite true!" A hush fell upon all. Even Fatimah’s comb was quiet. It was almost as if a spirit were passing through the room. At length the old lady said— "Any news of——" "None." "Would you tell me if there were?" "If you asked me—yes." "My poor boy!" "Hafiz has inquired everywhere. Nobody knows anything about him." "He will come back, though, I am sure he will," said Lady Nuneham with a nervous trill, and then a strange contraction passed over the Consul-General’s face, and he rose to go. "We’ll not speak about that again, Janet," he said; but, full of the sweetest and bitterest emotion that comes to the human soul—the emotion of a mother when she thinks of the son that is lost to her—the old lady did not hear. "I remember that his grandfather ... it was in the early days of the Civil War, I think ... he had done something against his General, I suppose——" She had been speaking for some moments when Fatimah, who was standing behind, reached round to her ear and said— "His lordship has gone, my lady," and then there was a sudden and deep silence. The molten gold died out of the river and the sky, and in the luminous blue twilight the old lady got into bed. "Fatimah," she said, "do you think Doctor would allow me to go up to the Citadel one day this week?" "Why not, if the carriage was closed and the blinds down?" "And, Fatimah?" "What is it, O my heart?"