Hurriedly, shamefacedly, with angry resentments and
self-justifications, he was pouring a flood of broken phrases at
her. She caught unintelligible references to narrow laws and the
imbecile English, to impositions binding only upon the fools.... And
then the word _hasheesh_.

Sharply then the truth took its outlines. Her father had been
smuggling in hasheesh. Hamdi Bey had discovered this, and Hamdi Bey,
unless silenced, had threatened betrayal.

The danger was real. English laws were stringent. Vaguely the
horrors loomed--arrest, trial.... Even if he escaped the scandal was
ruin....

Small wonder that her father had come flying upon the wings of his
danger and its deliverance, small wonder that his brow was wet and
his lips dry and his eyes hard with terror.

Thrown to the winds now his pretense of affection for Hamdi Bey! He
hated and feared him. The old fox had done this, he declared, to get
a hold upon him, for always there had been bad blood.

And the bey had heard, of course, of the beauty of the pasha's
daughter. Some cousin had babbled.... And undoubtedly the rumor of
that beauty--Tewfick Pasha received his inspiration upon the moment,
but that was not gainsaying its truth--had determined the bey to
find some vulnerable hold.

He was like that, a soft-voiced, sardonic devil! And this accursed