“It would be a debatable point whether you should be a prisoner of the Navy or the Army.”

“But instead, as your prisoner, I am safe from everything except your insults!”

Lord Castleford threw back his head and laughed.

“I see that, when it comes to repartee, you can hold your own,” he said. “May I offer you not a pipe of peace but a cup of tea?”

“I accept, as long as it is without prejudice,” Yamina said, “and I admit to feeling very much in need of something to eat and drink.”

“You had no midday meal?”

“I am afraid I missed it and a Turkish breakfast is not very sustaining.”

“Let me order you something more substantial than these biscuits,” Lord Castleford suggested.

Yamina shook her head.

“I shall look forward to dinner and I imagine that on board you will not dine late.”

“I will order it early,” Lord Castleford said, “and I promise you my valet is a very good cook.”

“I gathered that from the conversation you had with him when we first came aboard,” Yamina said. “You certainly travel in comfort, my Lord.”

“I have never thought that there is any particular merit in being uncomfortable when it is unnecessary,” Lord Castleford replied.

“So you make yourself self-sufficient with your valet, who can cook and look after you so efficiently that you do not need a wife?”

“That is what I have told myself,” he said. “We have an adage in England that says, ‘he travels fastest who travels alone’.”

“And you are very anxious to reach your goal. And what is it? The Embassy in Paris?”

Lord Castleford looked surprised at her perception and Yamina smiled.

“My father knew a number of European diplomats in St. Petersburg,” she said, “and they always talked as if Paris was the El Dorado for which they all yearned.”

“It is undoubtedly the most desirable and most important post to be bestowed by a benevolent Foreign Office,” Lord Castleford said.

“So that will be your appointment after Athens?”

He hesitated for a moment as if he had no wish to confide in her.

Then reluctantly he said,

“I am hoping so.”

“That means you have a very good idea it will be!” Yamina insisted. “Unless of course you blot your copybook in the meantime, which is what undoubtedly a houri in your luggage would do!”

“I have apologised for the description,” Lord Castleford said.

“It still hurts a little.”

“Words should never hurt us when they are untrue.”

“But they do,” Yamina said. “That is what is always so unfair in the world. It is the things that are not true, or rather half-true, that hurt so much more than downright lies.”

She paused before she went on,