A Son of the Sahara Part 34

But, as he waited there, he despised himself for even having momentarily contemplated letting a woman come between him and his cherished vengeance.

Once in Africa Sir George Barclay would prove an easy and unsuspecting prey. According to custom, the Governor should tour his province.

That tour would bring him within six hundred miles of Le Breton's desert kingdom. The latter intended to keep himself well posted in his enemy's movements. And he knew exactly the spot where he would wait for the Governor and his suite--the spot where sixteen years before the Sultan Casim Ammeh had been shot.

He, Le Breton, would wait near there with a troop of his Arab soldiers.

Unsuspecting, the Governor would walk into the trap. The whole party would be captured with a completeness and unexpectedness that would leave no trace of what had happened. With his prisoners he would sweep back to the desert.

Once in El-Ammeh, the daughter should be sold as a slave in the public market, to become the property of any Arab or negro chief who fancied her. And her father should see her sold. But he should not be killed afterwards. He should live on to brood over his child's fate--a torture worse than any death.

"Put your ear quite close. It's not a matter that can be shouted from the house-tops."

Like a sign from the sea, the echo of Pansy's voice whispered in his ear, a breath from his one night in heaven.

But he would not listen. Vengeance had stifled love--vengeance he had waited sixteen years for.

He glanced round with set, cold face.

It seemed to him no other woman could look so lovely and desirable as the girl entering.

Pansy was wearing a flounced dress of some soft pink silky material that spread around her like the petals of a flower. The one great diamond sparkled on her breast--a dewdrop in the heart of a half-blown rose.

On seeing her Le Breton caught his breath sharply. This girl the daughter of his father's murderer! This lovely half-blown English rose! What a trick Fate had played him!

Then, ashamed of his momentary craving, he faced her, a cruel smile on his lips.

There was a brief silence.

Pansy looked at him, thinking she had never seen him so handsome, so proud, so aloof, so hard as now. He stood watching her coldly with no word of welcome, no greeting on his lips.

He was the first to speak. And he said none of the things Pansy was expecting and was prepared for.

"Why did you tell me your name was Langham?" he asked in a peremptory manner.

"It is Langham," she answered, with some surprise.

"How is it, then, that you say Sir George Barclay is your father?"

"He is my father. Langham was my G.o.dfather's name, my own second name.

I had to take it when I inherited his money. That was his one stipulation."

Another pause ensued.

There was a hurt look in Pansy's soft eyes as she watched Le Breton.

As he looked back at her a hungry gleam came to his hard ones.

"What have you learnt about me?" he demanded presently.

"That you're half Arab."

He had almost expected her to say she had discovered he was the Sultan Casim Ammeh, her own and her father's sworn enemy.

"Is that all?" he asked, with a savage laugh.

"It's quite enough to account for everything," Pansy replied.

"Even for your coming into my arms and letting me kiss and caress you,"

he said, with biting sarcasm.

Pansy flushed.

"I didn't know anything about you then. And you know I didn't," she said with indignation.

"Or you wouldn't have listened to a word of love from me."

Much as he tried to hate the girl, now that he was with her he could not keep the word "love" off his lips.

Pansy felt she was not shining. She wanted to apologise, but he seemed determined to be disagreeable. What was more, she had a feeling she was dealing with quite a different man from the Raoul Le Breton who had won and broken her heart within a week. She put it down to her own treatment of him and it made her all the more anxious for an understanding. She could not bear to see him looking at her in that hard, cruel way, as if she were his mortal enemy--someone who had injured him past all forgiveness.

"It's not that I want to talk about at all," she said desperately.

"What do you want to talk about, then?" he asked, his cruel smile deepening.

"I want to say how sorry I am that I was angry with you that night.

But I ... I didn't know you were ... are----"

Pansy stopped before she got deeper into the mire.

She was going to say "a coloured man," but with him standing before her, her lips refused to form the words.

However, Le Breton finished the sentence for her.

"'A n.i.g.g.e.r.' Don't spare my feelings. I've had it cast up at me before by you English."

"You know I wouldn't say anything so cruel and untrue."

Again there was silence.

Le Breton watched her, torturing himself with the thought of what might have been.

"If you'd kept your word, you'd be my wife now. The wife of 'a n.i.g.g.e.r,'" he said presently.

"Don't be so cruel. I never thought you'd be like this," she cried, her voice full of pain.

"And I never thought you would break your word."

"In any case, I couldn't have married you, considering you're a Mohammedan," she said, goaded out of all patience by his unfriendly att.i.tude.

"Religion is nothing to me nowadays. I was quite prepared to change to yours."