The attacker, apparently one of Ali's agents, was one of the fierce Albanians from the Chimera Mountains whose arid peaks could be seen across the northern channel. So much was dear from the red scarf he wore round his head. The remainder of his costume was made up of baggy trousers with a short skirt of heavy linen, silver-buttoned waistcoat and a pair of espadrilles. From the wide red belt that cinched his waist in tighter than any stays, the senator's servants took an astonishing selection of weapons. The man was a walking arsenal. Once bound, however, it proved impossible to get another word out of him. He was tied to a tree and remained there in brooding silence, guarded by a number of armed servants, while Alamano sent a messenger hurrying to the fort.
On learning the real identity of the woman whom he had taken for some pretty local girl out for a spree, Chahin Bey displayed just the right amount of confusion consonant with good manners. The sight of Marianne's face, revealed in the light of the lanterns, afforded him a degree of pleasure that was evidently enough to overcome all merely social considerations. Seeing his gaze fixed brilliantly on herself all the way up to the house, Marianne realized that she had awoken in him sentiments no whit less primitive than those which she had aroused in the unknown man in the water. The thought gave her no satisfaction whatever. She had had enough of the primitive for one night.
'I hope the story will not get about,' she confided to Maddalena, who had emerged from her chamber, clad in an abundantly frilled dressing-gown, to provide the heroes of the occasion with sustaining drinks on their return.
'It was quite by accident that I was able to thwart the attacker, you know. I had gone down to the beach to bathe. It was so dreadfully hot! And then, as I was coming back, I bumped into the Bey and had the good fortune to knock him down just at the very moment the assassin fired. It is really nothing to make a fuss about.'
'But that is what Chahin Bey is certainly doing. Listen to him. He is already comparing you to the houris of paradise! Besides declaring that you have the courage of a lioness. You are in a fair way to becoming a heroine to him, Princess.'
'Well, I've no objection to that, so long as he keeps his feelings to himself. And if the senator will say nothing about my part in the affair.'
'But why? You have done a very fine thing which does great honour to France. General Donzelot—'
'Need never know,' Marianne wailed. 'I am really a very retiring person. I don't in the least care to be talked about. It is so embarrassing.'
What was particularly embarrassing, just then, was the knowledge that if Jason heard of what had taken place that night on the beach, he was likely to draw very different conclusions from the real truth. His nature was too jealous to allow him to overlook the smallest thing. But how was she to explain to her hostess that she was madly in love with her ship's captain and his opinion mattered more to her than anything?
Maddalena's brown eyes, which had been observing Marianne's slowly reddening cheeks, were alight with laughter as she murmured:
'It all depends on how the story is told. We'll do our best to restrain Chahin Bey's enthusiasm. Otherwise, the governor might conclude that you – er – collided with our young friend while endeavouring to dissuade him from seeing himself as Ulysses meeting Nausicaa. And you wouldn't wish the governor to think…'
'Not the governor or anyone else! The truth is, I feel a trifle foolish and even my friends—'
'There is nothing particularly foolish in wishing to bathe when the weather is as hot as this. But then, I have heard that Americans are exceedingly strait-laced, and even prudish.'
'Americans? Why Americans? I am certainly travelling in a vessel of that nation but I don't see…'
Maddalena slid her arm quietly through Marianne's and walked with her to the staircase that led to her room.
'My dear Princess,' she said softly, selecting a lighted candle from among those placed on a side table, 'let me tell you two things. One is that I am a woman and the second that, although I do not know you very well, I like you a great deal. I shall do all I can to shield you from the slightest inconvenience. If I spoke of Americans, it was because my husband told me of your captain's alarm when you were unwell at the harbour, and also what an excessively charming man he is! Don't worry. We'll try and ensure that he knows nothing. I will speak to my husband.'
As it turned out, Chahin Bey's enthusiasm was not of a kind to be stemmed. Alamano was silent about the part played by Marianne when handing the would-be assassin over to the island's police force, but as soon as it was light a procession of the Bey's servants entered the senator's garden bearing gifts for the 'precious flower from the land of the infidel caliph' and settled themselves outside the front door, waiting with the inexhaustible patience of the east until they could deliver their messages.
These, in addition to the presents, consisted of a letter couched in the most flowery Greek vernacular in which Chahin Bey declared that since 'the splendour of the princess of the sea-coloured eyes has put to flight the black-winged angel Azrael', he was her knight for all the days allotted to him by Allah on this sinful earth and meant to devote to her and to his oppressed people, groaning under the heel of the infamous Ali, the remainder of a life which, but for her, would already be no more than a memory too brief for glory.
'What does he mean?' Marianne asked uneasily, when the senator had concluded his somewhat halting but adequate translation.
Alamano spread out his arms in a gesture of ignorance.
'My dear Princess, I assure you I have not the least idea. That kind of phraseology is typical of oriental politeness. Chahin Bey means, I take it, that he will no more forget you than he will forget his own lost people.'
Maddalena, who had been following the reading of the letter with a good deal of interest, put down the big fan of woven reeds with which she had been trying to mitigate the heat and smiled at her new friend.
'Unless he is declaring his intention of offering you his hand as soon as he has recovered his domains? It would be quite in keeping with his romantically chivalrous nature. My dear, that boy fell head over ears in love as soon as he set eyes on you!'
What Chahin Bey actually meant was not made plain until that evening, with the arrival of Jason Beaufort, white with rage. He stormed on to the terrace where the two women were stretched in long chairs taking some refreshments and watching the sunset and it was all he could do to remember the ordinary observances of civility due to his hostess. As he made his bow to Maddalena, Marianne could tell from the frowning glance he cast in her direction that he had something to say.
The usual polite exchanges took place in an atmosphere so charged with electricity that Countess Alamano could not fail to notice it, and she took the first opportunity to excuse herself gracefully, on the score of being obliged to speak to her cook, realizing that the other two wished to be private together.