Life was beginning to exert its claims again, and among them that alarming mission the Emperor had charged her with.
Marianne looked up over the rim of the glass into which she had been gazing as though to prise the secrets of the future from its golden depths, and bent on the diplomat a gaze brilliant with hope.
'By all means, Comte. The sooner the better. You cannot be as eager as I am. But will I be admitted?'
'I think so,' Latour-Maubourg smiled. 'I have seen to it, by little rumours spread about, that the Haseki Sultan knows all about the French lady traveller, a kinswoman of her own into the bargain, who was braving great perils to visit her but mysteriously disappeared. She has already expressed a wish to see you, should you by any chance be found. So you will be sure of an audience, for curiosity's sake, if nothing else. It is up to you to make good use of it.'
Marianne's eyes returned to her glass of champagne. It seemed to her that she could see a face now, floating nebulously in the cloud of tiny bubbles. The features were vague, but the face was framed in a cap of golden hair, as deep and liquid as the wine itself: the unknown face of one who, long ago in the island of Martinique, had been called by the sweet name of Aimée and now ruled, unseen but all-powerful, over the warlike empire of the Osmanlis. Nakshidil. The French Sultana, the golden-haired, and the one person in the world with power enough to bring her back the man she loved.
Still smiling at the vision, Marianne closed her eyes, in utter confidence.