Looking back, Yamina could see the flames leaping now from the upper windows and appearing to come out of the very roof itself.

Higher and higher, stronger and stronger the fire burned, until even when they were some distance away she could hear the roar of it and the flames seemed to light the whole neighbourhood.

People came hurrying up the road and out of houses to see what was happening.

By this time they were almost out of sight and Yamina closed the curtains determined that she would look no more.

And yet, almost involuntarily, as she felt the sedan chair now moving more swiftly down the road, which inclined towards the City, she leaned forward to have one last look.

Her view was obscured by some cypress trees and yet, through their dark branches, she could see the red glow.

In a way, she thought, it was a splendid funeral pyre, which would have appealed to her father’s imagination.

‘You died in a blaze of glory, Papa,’ she wanted to say to him and almost felt as though he could hear her and that he chuckled in response.

Then, as she would have closed the curtains once again to sit back in the semi-darkness inside the box-like chair, she glanced down the road and saw riding towards them a man on a horse.

She recognised Lord Castleford immediately.

There was no one else she had seen since she came to Constantinople who looked like him.

It was not only his elegant riding clothes, which reminded her of the men she had known in St. Petersburg, it was also the way he carried his head with a kind of arrogance about it.

Only an Englishman, she thought, could look so aloof, so utterly indifferent to his surroundings.

And yet she had to admit that riding a well bred animal such as the one on which he had carried her when they had escaped from the Bazaar, he looked very distinguished.

As she drew nearer to him, she wondered why in fact he was on this particular road in an unimportant poor part of the City.

Then she was sure that she could guess the answer.

Could he be looking for her? Could he still be persistent in his intention to call on her which she had very ably prevented him from doing?

Perhaps Lord Castleford thought he might catch a glimpse of her. Or was she just imagining his interest and by this time had he forgotten the woman he had helped to escape from an unpleasant situation?

They were drawing nearer when Yamina had a sudden impulse to call out to him.

Supposing, she thought to herself, she asked for his assistance? Supposing she told him her predicament, that she was in fact Russian, although certainly not a spy?

Would he help her? Was there any chance of his doing so?

Even as she thought of it, Yamina knew that the idea was absurd.