quoted Miss Arbuthnot, reverently.

“Oh! Miss Arbuthnot, you all want to drive me to Baghdad,” cried Cecil, with tears in her eyes.

“Is not that very thing the leading you are looking for?” asked Miss Arbuthnot.

“I think it must be,” said Cecil, slowly. “Say no more, Miss Arbuthnot—I will go.”

CHAPTER IV.
THE SHINING EAST.

A very busy time followed upon Cecil’s decision. Her agreement with the Pasha had to be signed at once, before Denarien Bey left London, though it was not to come into force until she reached Baghdad. It was an imposing document, written in French, Arabic, and Turkish, with an English translation thoughtfully appended, and Denarien Bey signed it on the Pasha’s behalf, Lady Haigh adding her signature as a witness. Two lawyers and several interpreters assisted in drawing up the deed, and the extraordinary stipulations considered necessary by one party and the other became a subject of mirth for both. When this legal business was ended, Cecil went down to Whitcliffe for her farewells, and found that her prospective departure had cast such a glamour over her in the eyes of the younger children, that they regarded her with a mixture of awe and envy delightful to behold. She was early informed that she was expected to see and describe in full both Noah’s Ark and the Tower of Babel; while the mere mention of Nineveh, Babylon, and the Euphrates filled the youthful minds with an expectant wonder, which would have been surprised by no result of her prospective travels, however astounding.

Mrs Anstruther was chiefly concerned as to the fate of a box of plain and fancy needlework, the fruit of the labours of the St Barnabas’ working-party during the past winter, which was destined for Mrs Yehudi, the wife of a Jewish missionary labouring at Baghdad among his own people,[02] and which Cecil was requested to deliver in person. It was so delightful to think that Cecil would be able to write her a special account of Dr and Mrs Yehudi’s work, to be read aloud at the working-party, said Mrs Anstruther, who believed fervently in her step-daughter, and thought that she was the most wonderful young woman in the world. Perhaps it was this very faith which made her, in Cecil’s present state of mind, appear unsympathetic, for her imagination was vivid, and ran riot among the gorgeous possibilities of the situation, having been nourished principally on a careful study of the ‘Arabian Nights,’ which Mrs Anstruther regarded as a sort of introductory guide-book to modern Baghdad.

Taken altogether, the last few weeks at Whitcliffe were so heart-breaking that Cecil was almost relieved when the day arrived for her departure. She had still ten days or so to spend in London in getting her outfit, and her father was to come up to see her off, but this must be the final farewell to Mrs Anstruther and the children. Cecil could almost have gone down on her knees to beg to be allowed to stay, if that would have done any good, so utterly desolate and lonely did she feel in view of the prospect which lay before her; but the remembrance of Miss Arbuthnot’s strictures came over her, and helped her to depart without quite breaking down. But it was very hard, and when once the train was fairly on its way she withdrew into her corner and cried. What were all the splendours and potentialities of her future position compared with the row of tear-stained faces she had seen on the platform, as she leaned out to get the last sight of the station? Through all her wanderings that picture would remain imprinted on her mind, its comic elements unperceived, and all appearing as saddest earnest. Other people, whose attention was attracted by the family group, laughed to behold Mr Anstruther forcibly restraining Patsy and Terry, whose paroxysms of grief threatened to land them on the rails, while Fitz stood by, with his hands deep in his pockets, trying hard to whistle, and thereby prove his manhood. Eily, Norah, and Geraldine, wiping their eyes vigorously with abnormally dirty pocket-handkerchiefs, did not detract from the moving effect of the scene upon a disinterested bystander, nor did Mrs Anstruther, who had little Loey in her arms, and wiped her eyes upon his jacket. Indeed, a cynical passenger in Cecil’s own compartment, on hearing the tempest of wails and sobs which heralded the departure of the train, remarked that the members of that family were evidently trying to compete against the railway-whistle, and that they stood an excellent chance of success. He had only jumped in as the train moved off, and did not guess Cecil’s relationship to the family in question, but his wife nudged him fiercely and frowningly, and he said no more.

During her ten days in London Cecil had little time to give to grief. It was an incessant rush from shop to stores, and from stores to shop, a whirl of choosing things, and being fitted, and packing and superintending. She had not only her own things to get, but an assortment of the best and newest books and teaching appliances for her future schoolroom at Baghdad. For this she had carte blanche from the Pasha, and was further empowered to order a certain number of books on educational subjects to be sent out to her every year. Cecil had always (except at the moment of teaching her young brothers and sisters) felt a pride and pleasure in her profession as teacher, and she hailed with joy this proof of the high estimation in which his Excellency also held her office. Miss Arbuthnot luxuriated as much as she did in the newest educational inventions, but it was with an unselfish, altruistic delight, for the governors of the South Central High School had no mind for experiments, and preferred to wait until a new idea was several years old before adopting it.

At last all was ready, and books and maps and school furniture were safely packed and sent on board ship in company with Cecil’s own modest outfit. It had been arranged that she was to adopt a modification of the native costume when at Baghdad, so as to avoid as far as possible shocking the susceptibilities of the Moslems in the Palace, and her personal luggage was therefore comparatively small in bulk; still, it represented a good deal of care and thought, and Cecil and Miss Arbuthnot heaved sighs of relief when it was off their minds. The next business was the farewell to the old School, where the girls and governesses, most of whom knew Cecil well, and nearly all of whom regarded her with admiring envy, entertained her at supper, and presented her with an elaborate dressing-case, in returning thanks for which she so nearly broke down that Miss Arbuthnot had to finish the speech for her.

This was on the very last evening before her departure, and the next day her father came up by the first train from Whitcliffe, and Lady Haigh gave her up to him until three o’clock. If Cecil had been inclined to think that she had caused more disappointment than joy to her father, she was undeceived by those last few hours spent alone with him, when he allowed a corner of the veil of reserve which usually shrouded his inner feelings to lift, and let her see something of what she really was to him. To poor Mr Anstruther, however, on looking back on it, the interview did not seem to have been at all satisfactory, for he had been thinking for days past of things he ought to say to his daughter, and after it he was continually remembering others which he ought to have said, none of which had occurred to him at the time. As it was, he gave her many pieces of advice as to her behaviour, her occupations, her influence over her pupil, her Sundays, and so on, interspersed with periods of sorrowful silence, which were far more eloquent than his abrupt and painful counsels. Thus the time passed as they walked up and down the Thames Embankment together, or sat down and pretended to admire the flower-beds, and then they made their way slowly to the place where they were to meet Lady Haigh. Miss Arbuthnot had heroically denied herself the last sight of her pupil that she and her father might be alone together as long as possible, and thus Cecil had no one but Mr Anstruther to think of as she leant out of the carriage window for a last look at his tall spare figure and lined face. It was the last look for five years, and five such years!—too much to have faced if she had known what they were to bring.

It seemed to Cecil afterwards that Lady Haigh must have talked on quietly and continuously, without making a pause or expecting an answer, from the time they left the hotel until they reached the docks. It was kindly intended, no doubt, that Cecil might have time to cry a little and recover herself, but as a means of conveying information it was a failure. Lady Haigh told Cecil all about the captain and officers of the steamer by which they were to travel, and by which she herself had returned to England. She also remarked that her own Syrian maid had gone on board already with the luggage and would give Cecil any assistance she might need during the earlier part of the voyage, since the attendant who had been specially engaged for her would not join them until they reached Egypt. They were to break their journey at Alexandria and pay a visit of a week or two to Cairo, where a married sister of Lady Haigh’s was living, whose husband occupied a prominent post in the entourage of the then Khedive. Here also they were to be joined by a cousin of Lady Haigh’s, who had just been appointed surgeon of the hospital attached to the British Residency at Baghdad, and who was to escort them during the rest of their journey. By means of this one-sided conversation the chasm caused by the actual parting was bridged, and Lady Haigh beguiled the time of dropping down the Thames and settling their cabin with similar pieces of information, while, when they were once fairly at sea, Cecil was too ill to be able to think of any but strictly personal miseries.

For once the agents’ rose-coloured forecast of the voyage proved to be correct. The steamer did not meet with bad weather, nor did her engines break down, and she accomplished the distance in rather less than the average time, but Lady Haigh refused to listen to Cecil’s plea for a day or two in Alexandria, and insisted on hurrying on at once to Cairo.

“My dear,” she said, “all this”—with a contemptuous wave of her hand towards the fine houses on either side of the broad street through which they were driving—“all this is modern, European, French, tasteless! You want to enjoy your first sight of Eastern life, you say? Very well, then thank me for taking you at once where you will really see it, and not this wretched half-imitation.”

“But the sky! the palm-trees! the people! the colours, Lady Haigh!” cried Cecil in an ecstasy.

“Nonsense, my dear—nothing to what you will see at Cairo!” and Cecil was forced to be content.

A short railway journey brought them to Cairo, and they found Mr Boleyn, Lady Haigh’s brother-in-law, waiting to meet them. They drove to his house in a luxurious carriage, with running footmen and a magnificent coachman, and Cecil left the talk to her two companions, and gave herself up to the enjoyment of the new pictures which met her eye on every side. It seemed to her that she would have liked that drive to go on for ever, and she was genuinely sorry, tired though she was, to reach the Boleyns’ house, although she ought to have felt more sympathy for Lady Haigh, who had not seen her sister for over twenty years. It seemed to Cecil, however, that both ladies would have acquiesced cheerfully in an even longer separation, for they could not forget the time when Lady Haigh had been a clever and irrepressible younger sister, and Mrs Boleyn had felt it her duty systematically to snub her. Life in the tropics had not suited the elder sister as well as it had the younger, and Mrs Boleyn was tall and gaunt and withered, with a tendency to exult over Lady Haigh, because she (Mrs Boleyn) had always said that Elma would soon be tired of her studies and her talk about Women’s Rights, and would marry like other people.

“But she didn’t say that at all, my dear,” Lady Haigh confided to Cecil when they were going to their rooms. “What she always said was that I should never get a husband because of my ridiculous notions.”

These ancient hostilities were renewed at dinner over the mention of Dr Egerton, the gentleman who was to escort the travellers for the rest of their way.

“Charlie has not arrived yet, I see,” Lady Haigh said pleasantly, as they sat down to the table.

“No, and he is not likely to arrive, so far as I can tell,” said Mrs Boleyn. “The temptations of Port Said have probably been too much for him. What good you expect a feather-pated rattlebrain like that to do at Baghdad, I don’t know! I don’t consider that you have done yourself at all a good turn, Elma, in inducing Dugald to get him appointed there.”

“Charlie is a good fellow, and I want him to have a chance at last,” said Lady Haigh, stoutly. “He has been unfortunate in his superiors hitherto.”

“I consider that his superiors have been extremely unfortunate in him,” said Mrs Boleyn, with crushing calmness.

“Well, we shall see,” said Lady Haigh, peaceably. “I hope to do what I can to smooth his path, and Dugald will make allowances which another man would not, perhaps.”

“I call it a very foolish and ill-advised thing to bring him to Baghdad,” persisted Mrs Boleyn; but as her sister did not accept the challenge, the matter dropped.

Mr Boleyn ate his dinner industriously without taking any notice of the little dispute, and Cecil felt that his plan was the wisest, after she had received two or three snubs from his wife in the course of the evening for injudiciously endeavouring to change the subject of the conversation when it seemed to be verging upon dangerous ground. Mrs Boleyn’s manner and appearance did not tend to recommend her opinions to the casual observer, and Cecil espoused Lady Haigh’s side of the case so warmly in her own mind that she really did not need the further assurance which her friend gave her when they went to their rooms that night, and she found herself summoned to Lady Haigh’s balcony for a talk.

“I really can’t let you go to bed, Cecil, without putting you right about poor Charlie Egerton. You mustn’t let Helena prejudice you against him, for she has a way of finding something unpleasant to say about every one. I think you know me well enough by this time, my dear child, to be sure that I should not be likely to countenance anything really unsatisfactory or wrong; but the fact is that, as I said, Charlie has been unfortunate. He is very clever, and a most delightful fellow, but he and his superiors always manage to rub one another the wrong way. I daresay he is very eccentric, and likes to mix with the natives more than Englishmen in the East generally do, but several great men have done the same, and it is only a matter of taste, after all, not a crime. He is very outspoken, too, and perhaps too much disposed to be hail-fellow-well-met with every one he comes across. I verily believe that if he met the Viceroy himself”—Lady Haigh spoke with bated breath—“out for a walk, he would enter into conversation quite coolly and offer him a cigar, just as if he was a man of his own standing. If the Viceroy was a nice sensible sort of man and took it all as it was meant, it would be all right, but if he was angry and tried to snub him, Charlie would be very much hurt, perhaps indignant, and would probably let him know it. You can imagine how a man of this sort comes into collision with some of our stiff-and-starched officials. They can’t understand a surgeon, with not so very many years’ service, trying it on with them in that way, and they consider it impudence; so they snub him, and that produces a coldness. Then Charlie comes across some abuse, or some piece of official neglect which he thinks it his duty to expose, and I should fear, my dear, that, remembering the past, he doesn’t do it as tenderly as he might. Then there are reports and complaints and censures, and finally Dr Egerton is requested to resign. This has happened two or three times.”

“A good man, no doubt, but perhaps not a very wise one,” was Cecil’s comment.

“That’s just it, my dear—as good as gold, but with no worldly wisdom whatever. Well, I have got Sir Dugald to use his influence to get him this post at Baghdad, and I only hope he may keep it. But now I see Marta glaring at me like a reproachful ghost for keeping her up so long, so I must send you away, Cecil. To-morrow night you also will have begun to learn what a tyrant a confidential maid may become.”

Cecil laughed, and said she meant to enjoy her last evening of freedom, which she did by writing a long letter to her father, and describing to him all that she had seen since her landing at Alexandria. Consequently, she overslept herself the next morning and did not wake until Marta brought her in a cup of tea, and informed her that her maid had come and was waiting to see her.

“I didn’t know that Eastern people got up so early in the morning now,” said Cecil to herself as she dressed. “I thought they were always about half a day late, but I suppose this is a unique specimen.”

“Come, Cecil,” said Lady Haigh, tapping at her door, “don’t you want to speak to your maid? She has been waiting quite a long time.” And Cecil hurried through her toilet obediently, and, coming out of her room, found a tall, severe-looking elderly Syrian woman talking to her friend.

“Her name is Khartûm,” said Lady Haigh, turning to Cecil, “but she is always called Um Yusuf—mother of Joseph, that is. It is the custom in Syria, you know. She has been a widow a good many years, and her son is a soldier in the Turkish army. Her last situation was at Constantinople, where she was nurse to the children of Lord Calne, the late Ambassador, so she knows a good deal about the ins and outs of Court life, and will be able to give you all the needed hints as to etiquette, and so on. Of course I shall always be glad to tell you anything; but then you will not have me continually at hand, and really good manners in Turkey are a very complicated business.”

In fact, Um Yusuf’s duties were those of a duenna quite as much as a maid, and she was well fitted in appearance for the post. She wore the long black silk mantle of the respectable Egyptian woman, which enveloped her from head to foot, and Lady Haigh commended the costume as exceedingly sensible and responsible-looking.

“You will have to accompany Miss Anstruther everywhere,” she said to the maid; “and I am sure I can depend upon you to help her with your experience whenever she feels puzzled.”

“She too young,” said Um Yusuf, bending her black brows on Cecil for the first time. We spare the reader the good woman’s pronunciation, while preserving her eccentric grammatical style. “Why she not stay home and get married? Tahir Pasha’s daughter have governess, old lady with spectacles, not like this. Azim Bey very bad boy. Laugh at Mademoiselle Antaza.”

“That is cheering news for you, Cecil,” said Lady Haigh, laughing; “but I don’t think you’ll be frightened. Miss Anstruther knows something about naughty boys, Um Yusuf. She has four brothers at home.”

“English bad boy not like Toork bad boy,” said the imperturbable Um Yusuf; “Azim Bey wicked boy, read bad books, go do bad things. My cousin in Baghdad tell me all about him.”

“A boy of ten who reads bad books!” cried Lady Haigh. “I didn’t know I was bringing you to face such a monster of juvenile depravity, Cecil. These Eastern children are very precocious, I know, but I never thought of this particular form of wickedness. Well, my dear, I think you will conquer him if any one can. But now it is breakfast-time, and we are going to the bazaars afterwards with the dragoman, so we must not be late. You can go to your sister Marta, Um Yusuf, and she will show you the way about the house. She can tell you all you want to know, too, so you need not trouble to try to read Miss Anstruther’s letters.”

CHAPTER V.
A NEW EXPERIENCE.

“There!” said Lady Haigh, “what do you think of that, Cecil?”

They were sitting on the divan in a little cramped-up shop in one of the bazaars, with tiny cups of black coffee before them, and all manner of lovely fabrics—silks and muslins and brocades and gauzes—strewn around. The proprietor of the establishment, an elderly Moslem with a long beard, was exhibiting listlessly a rich, soft silk, as though it was not of the slightest consequence to him whether they bought anything or not. Leaning against the door-post was the gorgeously attired dragoman whom Mr Boleyn had ordered to attend the ladies in their shopping, and who made himself actively objectionable by insisting on explaining everything that met their eyes, regardless of the fact that Lady Haigh was an old Eastern traveller, and that Cecil had read so much about Egypt that, but for her ignorance of the language, she could have acted as cicerone in a Cairo street as well as he could.

At the sound of Lady Haigh’s voice, Cecil, whose seat was nearest the street, turned with a start, for her eyes had wandered down the long dim arcade and among the many-coloured figures thronging it.

“I think it will do very well,” she said, and withdrawing her eyes resolutely from the street, devoted herself to listening to the energetic bargaining carried on between her friend and the shopman with the dragoman’s assistance. It was very oriental, of course, but it spoiled the poetry of the scene, and she was glad when Lady Haigh at last rose and left the shop, after paying for the silk and directing it to be sent to the house.

“Caffé-house, ladies,” said the dragoman, when they had gone on a little farther; and Cecil looked with much interest and curiosity at the building he pointed out. It was a large, low room, with one side open to the street, crowded with men sitting on the divans and smoking, or drinking coffee out of cups which stood beside them on little low tables. The group was a motley one, and Cecil, as soon as her eyes became accustomed to the dim light, began to try and make out by their costume the nationality of the different items that composed it. Following the sound of a loud distinct voice speaking in some unknown tongue, her gaze reached the speaker, and she saw to her amazement that he was a European, or at any rate a sunburnt, dark-haired young man in ordinary English dress. Lady Haigh’s eyes followed hers, and seemed to make the same discovery at the same moment, for their owner recoiled suddenly, and, seizing Cecil’s arm, led her away.

“Storree-teller tell tale, ladies,” remarked the dragoman, but Lady Haigh appeared to be stifling irresistible laughter, and Cecil wondered whether the story-teller were an oriental Mark Twain.

“I know that boy will be the death of me!” cried Lady Haigh, finding her voice at last. “My dear, it’s Charlie!”

“Charlie? Dr Egerton, your cousin?” gasped Cecil.

“The same, my dear. This is one of his freaks. You know I told you how fond he is of mixing with the natives wherever he goes. Now I daresay he has been a week in Cairo without ever letting Helena and her husband know he was here, staying in some wretched little native inn, and prowling about the bazaars all day.”

Cecil’s private thought was that Dr Egerton’s tastes in the matter of hotel accommodation must be peculiar, though she herself acknowledged the fascination of the bazaars; but she had not time to make any remark on the subject, for they heard some one running after them, and turning, beheld the coffee-house hero himself.

“Cousin Elma!” he cried, shaking hands with her, “I am so dreadfully ashamed not to have known you. I had a dim idea that there were some English ladies there, looking into the room, but I didn’t in the least know who it was until a Baghdadi, who happened to be among the audience, said—I mean, told me you were there.”

“Oh, don’t be afraid of hurting my feelings, my dear boy. I know he said, ‘O my Effendi, behold the Mother of Teeth,’ now didn’t he?” and Lady Haigh laughed long and heartily.

“You are cruelly hard on my poor little attempts at politeness, Cousin Elma. You will give your friend an awful idea of me. Oh, by the bye,” with intense eagerness, “what have you done with the old lady? Is she at Cousin Helena’s? How do they get on together?”

“My dear Charlie, what old lady? I have not the faintest idea whom you mean.”

“Why, the lady graduate, the instructress of youth, Mentor in a pith helmet and spectacles, the new female Lycurgus,—his Excellency’s English governess?”

“Charlie, have I never told you not to run on at such a rate? I want to introduce you. This is Miss Anstruther, officially known as Mademoiselle Antaza, his Excellency’s English governess.”

“Impossible!” cried he, aghast.

“Really,” said Cecil, with some pique in her tone, “everybody seems to think it their duty to impress upon me that I am very young and very giddy for the office. I am rather tired of it.”

“My dear Miss Anstruther,” said Charlie Egerton, solemnly, “I only wish I were Azim Bey!”

“Charlie, for shame!” cried Lady Haigh. “I will not have you tease Miss Anstruther. Remember that you will be companions all through our voyage to Baghdad, so you must behave properly. Cecil, my dear, you must not mind this wild boy. He is always getting into trouble by means of his tongue, and never takes warning. Charlie, I want to know how it is that you have not turned up at Helena’s house. She hasn’t an idea that you are in Cairo at all.”

“Cousin Helena’s house would be a desert to me without you, Cousin Elma; surely you know that? I felt it so acutely when I came, that I determined not to show myself there until you were safely arrived. I strolled round each day and had a talk with the bowab (doorkeeper), and so learned the news. I knew you were expected last night, and I meant to present myself in decent time for dinner this evening. I’ll do so still unless you have any objection.”

“I only hope,” said Lady Haigh, rather absently, “that you won’t talk nonsense of this kind to Helena. She won’t understand it, you know.”

“If you wish it, Cousin Elma, I will confine my conversation exclusively to Miss Anstruther. I couldn’t venture to talk nonsense to her, so that ought to keep me safe.”

“My dear Charlie, nothing but a gag would keep you safe,” said Lady Haigh, with deep conviction. “And now we are going in here to do some shopping, and we don’t want any gentlemen to interrupt us, so good-bye until this evening.”

He turned away with a rueful look which made both ladies laugh, and disappeared obediently among the brilliant crowd, Lady Haigh only waiting until he was out of earshot to inquire anxiously what Cecil thought of him.

“He seems rather talkative,” said Cecil, expressing her thought mildly. “An empty-headed rattle,” was what she said in her own mind, and Lady Haigh, as if guessing this, took up the cudgels at once on her cousin’s behalf.

“Oh, that’s nothing but nervousness, my dear. You would really never guess that Charlie is simply afraid of ladies, especially young ones. He talks like that just to keep his courage up. But he is not like some men, all on the surface. There’s plenty of good stuff behind. Why, you mightn’t think it, but he can talk eight or nine Eastern dialects well enough to make the natives think him an oriental, and there are not many of whom that can be said. I’m afraid all his cleverness has gone in that direction, instead of helping him on in the world. Natives always take to him wonderfully, but when you’ve said that you’ve said all, or nearly all.”

Even after this, Cecil still thought that Lady Haigh’s fondness for her cousin made her very kind to his virtues and decidedly blind to his faults; but she was a little ashamed of this hasty generalisation after a discussion she had with him that evening, and felt obliged to confess that there was more in Dr Egerton than she had thought. Dinner was over, and they were sitting out in the open court of the Boleyns’ house. Mr Boleyn had been obliged to go out to attend some official function, and the voices of Lady Haigh and Mrs Boleyn, as they discussed, more or less amicably, reminiscences of their youth, mingled pleasantly with the soothing plash of the fountain. A severe snubbing from Mrs Boleyn during dinner had failed to reduce Charlie to silence or contrition, but now he seemed to enter into Cecil’s mood, and waited meekly until she chose to speak. To Cecil, lying back in her chair in a bower of strange creepers and flowering-shrubs, watching the moonlight as it crept over the walls of the house and the more distant minarets of a mosque a little way off, it seemed almost sacrilege to talk. But she awoke at last to the fact that she was not doing her duty by her companion, and reluctantly broke the delightful silence by the only remark which would come into her mind.

“Isn’t it lovely?” she asked, softly, and Charlie awoke out of a reverie, and made haste to answer that it was heavenly.

“I have longed for this all my life,” said Cecil, “and Lady Haigh says that Baghdad will be even better.”

“Better? in what way?” asked Charlie.

“More Eastern, you know,” said Cecil, “but I can’t imagine anything more perfect than this.”

“I see that you are one of the people who feel the fascination of the East,” said he.

“Who could help it?” asked Cecil. “It is a fascination, there is no other word for it. Kingsley says that a longing for the West is bound up in the hearts of men, but I think that in this age of the world the reverse is true. I daresay if I had ever been in America it would be different; but now it seems to me that all the romance is gone from the West, and that it is all big towns, and gold-mines, and wonderful inventions, and rush. The East seems so mysterious and reposeful, so old, too, and so picturesque.”

“And yet,” said Charlie, “you want to change it all, and import into it the newest ideas in religions and the latest Yankee culture. You would like all those mysterious veiled women, with the beautiful eyes, whom you saw to-day, to be turned into learned ladies in tweed frocks and hard hats, with spectacles and short hair.”

“No, indeed,” said Cecil, “that is not my ideal at all. A modification of their own style of dress would be much more suitable to them than a bad copy of ours. And they couldn’t all be learned, but they all ought to know a good deal more than they can at present, poor things! If they were only better educated, it would be much easier to introduce reforms Denarien Bey says that most of Ahmed Khémi Pasha’s plans are thwarted by his harem.”

Charlie groaned. “I beg your pardon, Miss Anstruther,” he said, “but my feelings were too much for me. An Eastern I can respect, a European I can pity, but a Europeanised, Europeanising Turk like Ahmed Khémi I can only detest.”

“I can’t hear my employer spoken against in that way,” said Cecil.

“Your employer? So he is. Well, Miss Anstruther, I can forgive him anything, since he is bringing you to Baghdad.”

Cecil frowned. “I really cannot imagine,” she said, severely, “how a person like yourself, who admires quiet so intensely, can talk so much.”

“That is the fault of the two natures in me,” said Charlie, gravely, though he was inwardly shaking with laughter over this amazing snub. “As a European, I am bound to talk and go on like other people, to be feverishly busy, and if I have no work of my own, to hunt up other people’s and set them at it. Then I get sick of it all, and go off and become an Eastern. Perfect idleness is then my highest idea of happiness, and I am quite content to sit for a whole day in the tent-door with an Arab sheikh, exchanging platitudes on the inevitability of the decrees of fate, at intervals of half an hour.”

“But have you ever tried that?” asked Cecil, laughing.

“Tried it? I do it periodically, whenever I can get hold of a sufficiently unsophisticated sheikh. It doesn’t do to go to the same people twice. They always find out somehow afterwards who you really are, and spot you the next time. But the desert life is wonderful, simply wonderful! The mere thought of it makes me long to go out there and begin it again this moment. It is so free and irregular. You pass from tremendous exertion to absolute idleness.”

“And while you are idle the poor women do all the work,” interrupted Cecil, unkindly.

“Yes, that is where Eastern and Western notions clash,” said Charlie. “There must be some drawbacks even to desert life, and one scarcely feels called upon to go about lecturing to the Arabs on the proper treatment of their wives.” He looked at Cecil mischievously, but she declined to be drawn into an argument on the subject of women’s rights, and asked—

“Have you ever spent a really long time in the desert?”

“That depends on what you consider a long time,” he answered. “When I was in Persia I went with a caravan of pilgrims from Resht to Kerbela, which took some time, and a good part of the way lay through the desert. Of course the pilgrims were not always the most delightful of fellow-travellers, and one couldn’t help objecting very strongly to the companionship of the dead bodies which were carried along slung on mules to be buried at Kerbela. It was rather wearing, too, to have to be on your guard the whole time lest you should betray yourself, for the pilgrims are not particular, and would have torn you to pieces as soon as look at you. But it was great fun, all the same. There was pleasure even in the risk, and then it’s not many Europeans that get the chance of seeing the holy places. All that, and the desert as well.”

“But I don’t understand,” said Cecil. “Do you mean that you pretended to be a Mohammedan?”

“Yes,” answered Charlie, smiling. “I assure you that I am not one really, Miss Anstruther.”

“I don’t see that that makes it any better,” said Cecil. “You mean that you dressed up and went through all the ceremonies just as if you had been a Mohammedan, and said all the prayers, and never meant it? Of course they are wrong, but they believe in their religion, and it can’t make it right for us to do things of that kind. Besides, for you it was acting a lie.”

“Well, I don’t know. It never struck me in that light,” said Charlie. “I’m afraid I looked upon it as part of the joke, Miss Anstruther. Well, perhaps not of the joke—as part of what had to be gone through to ensure success. You see, I had an object. I was studying the dissemination of cholera by means of these caravans of pilgrims, and I wanted to do it thoroughly, so I thought I would go in for the whole thing. But I might perhaps have done it and stopped short of that. I’ll remember another time.”

“Charles,” said Mrs Boleyn’s voice, “perhaps you are not aware of the lateness of the hour;” and after this delicate hint, Charlie took his departure. During the remainder of their stay in Cairo, he made a point of appearing at unexpected times, and helping the travellers to organise expeditions to the Pyramids and other points of interest, but he turned a deaf ear to Lady Haigh’s hint that he ought to volunteer to come and take up his quarters at the Boleyns’, and at this they could scarcely wonder. Before the end of their stay, Cecil, though declaring emphatically that she was not in the least tired of Cairo, began to display great eagerness to reach Baghdad, and Lady Haigh made no pretence of disguising her desire to do the same.

“Helena and I agree better apart, my dear,” she explained frankly to Cecil. “One really can’t quarrel much in letters, but when we are together we can’t do anything else.”

This was already sufficiently obvious, and it is probable that no one, unless perhaps Mr Boleyn, was sorry when the time came for the travellers to journey to Port Said, there to resume their interrupted voyage. Lady Haigh and Cecil, with their two maids, and Dr Egerton, with his Armenian boy Hanna, made an imposing party, and excited no small amount of curiosity and speculation in the minds of the passengers on board the P. & O. boat. Lady Haigh was never a woman to do things by halves, and from the moment that she came on board she took by sheer force of character the place she felt was her right, although in the present case it was conceded to her without opposition as soon as it was known who she was.

“Have you noticed,” said Charlie Egerton to Cecil, one night in the Red Sea, “that my dear cousin is perceptibly growing taller and more imposing in appearance? Her foot is on her native heath now. This side of Suez we are under the beneficent sway of the Indian Government, and her position is assured, whereas at home she might have been anybody or nobody. You will observe the majesty of her demeanour increase continually, until, when she reaches Baghdad, you will recognise in her every gesture that she represents the Queen-Empress.”

“But surely that is Sir Dugald’s business?” laughed Cecil.

“Sir Dugald can’t do everything. He can’t render the Um-ul-Pasha and the other ladies at the Palace the civilities which are imperatively due to them, and he can’t conciliate or madden the ladies of the European colony by delicately adjusted hospitalities as she can. If I may say so, Cousin Elma represents the social half of her most gracious Majesty, and Sir Dugald, the Balio Bey as they call him, the administrative half.”

“And which is the more important?” asked Cecil.

“Too hard. Ask me another,” said Charlie.

“Well, which of them rules the other?” asked Cecil.

“That is a delicate point,” returned Charlie, “and opinions naturally differ; but if you ask me, I should say that Sir Dugald does it in reality, but that Cousin Elma thinks she does, and so both are satisfied.”

“Well, I think I should prefer it the other way,” said Cecil, meditatively, and Charlie laughed.

“That is exactly what I should have imagined,” he said. “But, joking apart, you can see that others consider that Cousin Elma has a right to think a good deal of herself. Look at the people here, for instance. Happily, we have no very big-wigs on board, or there might be trouble. In any case, Cousin Elma, as the wife of a major-general, would carry things with a pretty high hand among the army set, but there would be difficulty with the wives of the bigger civilians. But it’s all right with them too now, because Sir Dugald is a political. They know their duty too well to be unpleasant, and besides, it is quite on the cards that Sir Dugald might be useful to any of them any day, if it was desired to find a nice out-of-the-way berth for some unfortunate relative who had fooled away his chances, as Sir Dugald sympathetically remarked to me was my case, the only time I saw him.”

If Charlie expected an indignant contradiction, he was disappointed. Cecil looked away over the sea, and smiled involuntarily.

“I was wondering whether you had talked away your chances,” she said, for they were on sufficiently intimate terms now to allow of little hits like this.

“That’s exactly what I did do,” he said. “You may be surprised to hear it, Miss Anstruther, but I have a very inconvenient conscience, especially with regard to the things which other people leave undone. They say that in England abuses are good things on the whole, because people get up a separate society for the removal of each one, and this affords occupation to many deserving persons; but in the East they’re good for a man to come to grief over, and nothing more. If you will only let things alone you’re all right, but if you make a fuss it’s like fretting your heart out against a stone wall. Why, in my last district—my last failure, if you please—I found there was cholera brewing. I have studied the subject particularly, as I think I have mentioned to you before, but because I could see a little further than the rest of them they called me faddy and an alarmist. I told them what measures ought to be taken, but the man above me, pig-headed old brute! squashed all my representations. If ever a man deserved to be carried off by cholera, that fellow did. At last the cholera came, and I wrote him a letter that he had to attend to. The precautions I had recommended were taken—it was too late, naturally, but we checked the thing before it had gone very far—and I was recommended to resign. Insubordination and so on, of course.”

“But were you obliged to be insubordinate?” Cecil ventured to ask.

“No, it was too late, like the precautions. He couldn’t pretend to disregard the cholera, but I had to relieve my mind.”

“That was a great pity,” said Cecil, and would say no more.

CHAPTER VI.
A PERIOD OF PROBATION.

At Karachi there came the first interruption to the smoothness which had hitherto marked the journey. Lady Haigh had expected to be met at this point by the gunboat which was under Sir Dugald’s orders, and was generally occupied in patrolling the Shat-el-Arab and the Persian Gulf for the protection of British interests, and she had intended to make a triumphal voyage and entry into Baghdad by its means. But instead of the gunboat there came a telegram from Sir Dugald to say that the services of the Nausicaa were imperatively required in the opposite direction, and that the travellers must therefore come on in the ordinary way. Unfortunately, however, they had missed the regular steamer to Basra, and Lady Haigh, who had developed an extraordinary desire to have the journey over, insisted that they should take passage on another that happened to be starting. Charlie Egerton protested loudly against this, declaring that he knew what those wretched coasters were like—ramshackle old things, creeping along and touching at all sorts of unheard-of ports, and staying for no one knew how long. They would probably reach Basra not a day sooner than if they had waited for the next steamer; and if they were fated to lose time on the journey, why not spend it at Karachi, and take the opportunity of showing Miss Anstruther a little of India? But here Lady Haigh looked at him with mingled sorrow and impatience, and simply reiterated her determination to press on.

The voyage on the coasting steamer was a new experience to Cecil. The vessel was old, the cargo mixed, the crew also mixed—in fact, everything was mixed but the society, and that was extremely select, since it was confined to their own party. The captain and mate, overawed by the presence of two ladies on board, withdrew themselves as much as possible from the cabin, though they fraternised with Charlie, as every one did, when they could get him alone. Day after day the vessel steamed past the same low shores, with coral-reefs stretching out to sea, and ranges of low hills in the distance behind. Several times, during the first part of the voyage, she touched at queer little towns of square, white, flat-roofed houses, with high towers, where the inhabitants could catch what wind there was, rising up among the feathery date-palms. There were Englishmen at all these places—telegraph officials, clerks, and agents—who talked Anglo-Indian slang, and did their best to render life endurable by all manner of Indian expedients. After this there was a considerable stretch of coast without any port, and the captain and mate developed an inclination to take things easily and to let the ship look after herself. The first result of this was that the steamer ran ashore one night, taking the ground quite quietly and gently on a reef connected with an archipelago of small islands. The captain blamed the mate, whose watch on deck it was; the mate blamed the captain, who knew these waters better than he did; and both united in blaming the steersman, the charts, and the compass. The blame having been thus equitably distributed, the belligerents agreed to bury the hatchet and try and get the ship off; and as it appeared to be necessary to shift the cargo for this purpose, tents were constructed for the passengers on the nearest island. To these they were very glad to retreat, for the ship had heeled over to such a degree that the floor of the cabins was a steep slope, at the foot of which everything from the other side of the room gradually collected.

Here, then, on this nameless island, with its palm-trees and its spring of water, were all the materials for a latter-day idyll. A shipwreck, a desert island, a prolonged picnic, everything was complete, and yet one or two things spoilt it altogether, so that the episode would scarcely be worth mentioning save to show how Lady Haigh’s schemes went wrong. Charlie did not fail to remind her that he had counselled her to wait at Karachi, and pointed out that she, at any rate, would have been much more comfortable there. Their desert island was so far complete that there was even a likelihood of pirates in its neighbourhood, although Cecil, who had a robust and healthy faith in the past exploits of the British navy, and in the Pax Britannica established in Indian waters at this period of the century, could never be brought to believe that Charlie was doing more than trying to frighten her when he mentioned them. The greatest drawback to the place was its extreme smallness. There could be no exciting explorations, journeys made in single file through dense forests right into the heart of the island, because there was no forest and so very little island. There could be no hope of discovering volcanoes, caves, traces of previous inhabitants, wild beasts, or any other commonplaces of desert-island travel, because there was no room for them. If Lady Haigh was in her tent and wanted Cecil, she knew that she must be either sitting in the shade outside, or standing under the palm-trees looking out to sea, for there was nowhere else. Again, there were no hardships—not even the semblance of any. The ladies were not so much as obliged to make their own beds, for, besides their two maids, there was one of the ship’s stewards, a Zanzibari boy, who was always on shore at their service. On board this luckless youth was perpetually falling from the rigging or into the hold, and he was sent on land to keep him from doing any more damage to himself or to other people. No doubt it would be pretty and idyllic to describe how Charlie Egerton picked up sticks and lighted the fire in order that Cecil might prepare the breakfast, but it would not be true; for, in the first place, there were no sticks, but a portable stove brought from the vessel, which burned petroleum; and, in the second place, the ship’s cook was still responsible for the meals. In fine, this was a shipwreck with all the modern improvements.

Perhaps it was this fact which rendered the relations of the castaways different from those usually observed under such circumstances. The crew did not go off in the boats, abandoning the vessel and the passengers, nor did they broach the rum-casks. They worked as hard and were as obliging and respectful as before, and brought queer fishes and shells for the ladies to see when they found them. When the captain and mate walked along the reef at night to what was still called the “cabin dinner,” they still ate in silence, and when the meal was over, the mate felt it his duty at once to go and see what the men were doing, and when he did not come back, the captain invariably went to see what was keeping him, and did not come back either. As for the men, they appeared in great force on Sunday evening, when hymns were to be sung, and again one week-day, when a concert was got up after work was over, the sailors in their clean clothes, with very shiny faces and very smooth hair, and the Lascars in gorgeous raiment of all the colours of the rainbow, but otherwise the passengers saw less of them than they had done on shipboard.

The archipelago to which the desert island belonged was not all uninhabited. There were two good-sized islands in it which supported a considerable population, and the castaways made two expeditions to the larger of these. The people were all bigoted Moslems, who testified extreme horror at the sight of the unveiled faces of Lady Haigh and Cecil, and regarded the whole party with feelings of lively disapprobation. Their own women were wrapped up from top to toe whenever they ventured out of doors, and their faces were additionally protected by a thick horse-hair mask, so that it is possible that it was the discomfort of this arrangement which made the men fear a domestic rebellion as the result of the visit of the Frangi ladies. For the rest, the islanders lived a good deal on fish, and apparently also threw away a good deal, and dried a considerable quantity for future consumption, which made their streets unpleasantly odoriferous, and there were few attractions in their surroundings to counterbalance this defect, until, in extending the area of their observations, Cecil and Charlie made a great discovery. Lying among the hills which backed the little town was a valley filled with prehistoric ruins, and beyond this again an ancient cemetery. To Cecil this find was as a trumpet-call to utilise her detention in a way which would command the gratitude of the learned world by demonstrating, possibly finally, the real origin of the Phœnicians, and Charlie required little persuasion to induce him to help her. Accordingly, they returned to the island the next day, prepared for business. Photography was not practised then as it is now, but Cecil intended to sketch the ruins, and Charlie was to hire natives to begin excavations under his direction. Unfortunately, these proceedings did not meet the views of the inhabitants. To them it appeared certain that the strangers were going to search for hidden treasure, with the necessary result of exposing the island to the wrath of the defrauded ghostly guardians of the spoil, and they expressed their dissent so strongly that the baffled explorers were thankful to be able to return to their boat in safety, the people hurling maledictions and more substantial missiles after them. This is the reason why, so far as Cecil is concerned, the Phœnician problem remains still unsolved.

“I could soon make friends with those island fellows if I had them by myself,” remarked Charlie as they rowed away, with rather a wistful look back at the shore.

“But, my dear boy, why don’t you, then?” cried Lady Haigh, with marked inhospitality. “Go over by yourself and live among them until we get the ship off. We could easily let you know when we were ready to start, and we should get on quite well without you.”

“Yes, do go if you would rather,” said Cecil.

“It’s likely, isn’t it?” was his sole reply, and no more was said. Under ordinary circumstances, Lady Haigh felt sure, he would have been off to those islanders for a week or a month, even though it had involved the sacrifice of all his interests in life, and the fact that he did not succumb to their attractions now showed that there was some very potent influence at work to detain him. What that influence was, Lady Haigh had no difficulty in guessing. Charlie’s behaviour as his cousin’s escort had been most exemplary, but she did not flatter herself that it was her society he sought. Charlie could never have been anything but a gentleman, but the assiduous way in which he had attended upon Cecil and herself since they had left Cairo bespoke something more than mere politeness. He had found out the way to catch Cecil’s attention now, and he used it. He was full of the most enthralling anecdotes and stories, narratives of his own adventures, and accounts of the queer people he had met in his wanderings, and he proved that his tales were as potent to interest a graduate of London University as a knot of listeners in a Cairo coffee-house. It was he who, by his extraordinary yarns, whiled away the long days on the island; and they were very long sometimes, for both ladies were anxious to reach their journey’s end, and chafed somewhat at the enforced detention. Happily there was no fear that the interruption to their voyage would cause anxiety to their friends, for the ways of the coasting steamers were known to be so erratic that no one would think of theirs as missing for a long time, and by that time they would probably have been picked up by the next regular steamer from Karachi; but to Cecil, who was nervously anxious to get to her work, the delay was a weary one. Under these circumstances Charlie’s power of discoursing for hours together came as a great relief. Cecil laughed at him in public, and in private teased him occasionally, in a dignified way, about his extraordinary flow of conversation; and yet felt, though she never confessed it to herself, that Baghdad would not be quite the land of exile she had pictured it, and endured the long delay very philosophically on the whole.

“I really think that Azim Bey will be grown up by the time I reach Baghdad,” she said one day, when the crew had been patiently shifting and reshifting the cargo for some time without producing any perceptible effect on the ship’s position.

“Are you afraid of getting out of practice, Miss Anstruther?” inquired Charlie. “Because I shouldn’t a bit mind your keeping your hand in by teaching me a little. We could get up a stunning schoolroom by putting one of those flat rocks for a blackboard, and you could instil some mental philosophy and moral science into me. They never could make me learn any when I was a boy, and all I’ve picked up since is entirely practical and quite contrary to all received rules, so that I should be glad to learn how to think properly.”

“Nonsense, Charlie,” said Lady Haigh, wagging her head wisely; “Miss Anstruther is anxious to get to her proper work, and doesn’t want to waste her time on you. If you really want to please her, help the men to get the ship off, so that we can go on again.”

“Cruel, cruel woman!” he cried. “No sentiment about Cousin Elma, is there, Miss Anstruther? Well, after that, if my humble efforts can do anything, we shall not be here much longer, though the mate did remark airily, when I offered to help, that they didn’t want any landsmen meddling about. But at any rate, if we wait two or three months longer, we must be picked up by the mail.”

As it happened, the mail came in sight that very evening, and at once hove to in answer to the signals from the stranded ship. By the united efforts of the two crews the coaster was got off, and at length proceeded on her way, to the great joy of the majority of her passengers. With Charlie Egerton, however, it was otherwise, for not only did he regret the pleasant time which was past, but there was a look in Lady Haigh’s eye now and then which betokened a lecture in store, and as he guessed what would be the subject of this, he made it his constant endeavour to avoid it.

“I really feel quite sorry to leave our island now, don’t you, Lady Haigh?” asked Cecil, as they stood on deck, watching the tops of the palm-trees disappear beneath the horizon. “Our life there has been so quiet, a sort of pause between our hurry in starting and the new work to which we are going.”

“Nonsense, my dear Cecil; you are just like a cat. You can’t bear to be moved,” said Lady Haigh, with more force than politeness. “There are some people who would grow sentimental on leaving a prison, if they had only been there long enough.”

Such impatience was so rare with Lady Haigh that Cecil sank into an awed silence, and sentimentalised no more over the island. The second part of the voyage proved to be as safe and pleasant as the first part had been disastrous, and the captain was merciful enough to make only short halts at Bushire and Mohammerah. When Basra was reached, it was found that the services of the gunboat were not yet available, and as there was little in the town, half-busy and half-ruinous, to allure to a longer stay, Lady Haigh swallowed her pride sufficiently to let Charlie take passage for the party in one of the steamers plying to Baghdad. They were again the only passengers, and were accorded a sort of semi-royal honour which amused the two younger members of the party very much, but which seemed only natural to Lady Haigh. The river voyage was very pleasant, especially when they left behind the Shat-el-Arab, which was scarcely to be distinguished from the sea, and entered the Tigris. Villages half hidden in forests of palm, long rows of black Bedouin tents pitched in the more open spaces, and the people themselves, wild and suspicious enough, but rudely prosperous and in a way well-dressed, afforded constant interest to Cecil. Even better was the distant view of the mountains of Luristan, which was obtained about mid-way in the journey, the lofty summits covered with perpetual snow towering above the nearer expanse of feathery green and the swiftly flowing river at its foot. Cecil sat so long trying in vain to reproduce in a sketch the full effect of the contrast that she worked on into the twilight, and was forced at last to desist with a headache. Upon discovering this fact, Charlie showed himself so assiduous in moving her deck-chair about for her, and in trying to arrange her cushions more comfortably, that the sight seemed to irritate Lady Haigh.

“My dear,” she said at last to Cecil, “you will never be better on deck here. You are tired out. Go to bed at once, and then you will wake up fresh and well to-morrow.”

Cecil smiled an assent, and after wishing the others good night, disappeared into her cabin. Lady Haigh waited impatiently until she had been gone some little time.

“Charlie,” she said at last, in a low voice, “I want to speak to you.”

“Yes, Cousin Elma?” he made answer, without any suspicious show of alacrity. “What a start you gave me, though! I was thinking.”

“What about?” asked Lady Haigh, sharply. Then, as his eyes involuntarily sought the direction in which Cecil had disappeared, “The usual subject, I suppose? Charlie, I always foretold that when you did fall in love you would go in very far indeed, but I didn’t guess how far it would be. This is what comes of not caring for ladies’ society.”

“Exactly. One lady is enough for me,” he returned—“present company always excepted, Cousin Elma, of course. But seriously, did you ever know any one like Miss Anstruther?”

“Now we are well launched into the subject on which I wished to speak to you,” said Lady Haigh. “Allow me, Charlie, as being in a certain sense Miss Anstruther’s guardian, to ask you your intentions?”

“To speak to her to-morrow if I can only get her alone, and marry her as soon as possible, if she will have me,” he replied, promptly.

“So I thought. Well, Charlie, all I have to say is that you are to do nothing of the kind, however often you may manage to see her alone.”

“Really, Cousin Elma, I believe that Miss Anstruther is of age, and capable of managing her own affairs.”

“Don’t put on that high and mighty manner, Charlie. I am advising you for your good and hers. Do you know anything of the footing on which Miss Anstruther stands here?”

“Once or twice she has mentioned some sort of agreement to remain a certain time, but I imagine it would not be difficult to get that set aside.”

“My dear boy, that is all you know about it! Miss Anstruther is solemnly pledged to remain in this situation for two years. In some sort of way, I am her security for doing so. Now, I ask you, as an honourable man, would you be acting rightly if you induced her to break this agreement, or could you respect her if she showed herself willing to break it in order to marry a man of whose very existence she was not aware when she signed it?”

“Very well, Cousin Elma. I will be satisfied with a two years’ engagement, then.”

“You will have nothing of the sort with which to be satisfied, Charlie. I will not allow you to speak to Miss Anstruther until the two years are over. Then, if you like, you can say what you want to say before she signs the second agreement to serve for three years more. I will leave the matter in her hands then, and you shall have your chance, but you are not to speak to her now.”

“And may I ask the reason of this extraordinary prohibition?”

Charlie’s tone was dogged and haughty, but Lady Haigh answered unflinchingly.

“Consider, my dear boy. Let us suppose first that Cecil accepts you. You know that she is in a very delicate position, and will need in any case to walk very warily. You know what the Baghdadis are, you know the miserable scandals which circulate so wonderfully among the foreign colony in such a town as this. To have her name connected with yours would at once destroy all the poor girl’s chances of success, while afterwards her position will be more assured and she will know better what she is doing. Leave her in peace for these two years, Charlie; surely it is not such a very great thing to do for her sake? It is important for her to obtain her salary undiminished, too. You will see her once a-week at least, so you will know that she is well and happy, but don’t disturb her in her work by trying to make her fond of you.”

“What next?” cried Charlie. “But you know she might refuse me, Cousin Elma. What then?”

“I think it is most probable that she would. She takes an interest in you, Charlie, but I don’t believe she cares for you at all in the way you want. Well, you know that she is to spend Sunday at the Residency whenever she is at Baghdad. Now do you think that she would find any peace and comfort in her Sundays if she were always obliged to meet a rejected lover with reproachful eyes? You would make her life a burden to her.”

“I might go away,” he murmured, dolefully enough, for it is one thing to despair of your own chances, and quite another to have them pronounced hopeless by some one else.

“Yes; and sacrifice your prospects irretrievably just as Sir Dugald has got you this post, in the hope that you would do better here with him than you have hitherto. I suppose you would intend such a move as a gentle intimation to poor Miss Anstruther that your ruin lay at her door? No, don’t be furious, my dear boy; I only say it looks like it. You would go away with some of those wild Arabs or Kurds, I presume; but would that be much better than living a civilised life at Baghdad, and seeing Cecil every Sunday?”

“You are too horribly practical and calculating, Cousin Elma. Not to speak to her for two years is dreadful. How can I stand it?”

“It’s better than being refused, at any rate,” said Lady Haigh. “But you know, Charlie, I can’t promise that she will listen to you then, even if she has learnt to care for you. She is a very conscientious girl, and quite feels, I believe, that she has a special mission here.”

“Hang missions!” cried Charlie, rebelliously. “Pretty girls have no business with them. Why can’t they leave them to ugly old women?”

“Like myself, I suppose?” said Lady Haigh. “Thank you, Charlie—no, don’t apologise. Well, you see if Cecil believes that she has a mission to finish Azim Bey’s education, she will probably feel bound to continue it for the five years specified. If she thinks it her duty, I believe she will do it.”

“So do I,” said Charlie, seriously. “I had rather not be weighed in the scale against Miss Anstruther’s duty. I’m afraid I should go to the wall. But five years, Cousin Elma! Do you know how old I shall be then?”

“Nonsense!” cried Lady Haigh; “what’s five years at your time of life? It’s we old people who can’t spare it. Why, anything may happen in five years.”

A good deal was to happen, more than either Charlie or Lady Haigh anticipated.

“Well,” said Charlie, “at least I shall see her once a-week. I must live on that, I suppose, and endure the rest of my time. Now, Cousin Elma, I have listened to you a good deal, so you must just listen to me a moment. Did you ever know a girl like her, so sweet and gentle, and so awfully good? I believe she could do anything she liked with me, and she doesn’t see it a bit. You know what I mean; she doesn’t seem to understand compliments, she always wants to talk sense. And the worst of it is, that whatever I say now she never thinks I’m in earnest. I know it’s my fault; you’ve told me over and over again not to talk so fast, but I can’t help it when—well, when I particularly want to make a good impression, you know, and now she won’t take me seriously. And I don’t want her to think that I am always playing the fool,—what can I do?”

“If you ask me,” said Lady Haigh, “I think it is a very good thing, for your own sake, that you have now two years in which to show Cecil that you really are in earnest. She has always taken life very seriously, so that you are rather a new experience to her, you see; but I think she is beginning to understand you better, if that is any comfort to you.”

“Thanks awfully, Cousin Elma. I know it’s all my own fault. You mustn’t think I want to reflect on her. She’s unique, but she’s absolutely perfect.”

“Oh, Charlie, Charlie, you are a sad fellow!” cried Lady Haigh. “Now, good night.”

CHAPTER VII.
“IN INMOST BAGDAT.”

“My last day of this!” said Charlie to himself the next morning, as he went on deck. It was a sad thought, and he tried hard to be duly miserable, but the morning was so fine and the air so clear that he could not help whistling, in a sort of sympathy with nature; and then Cecil came on deck, looking as bright and fresh as the day, her headache all gone, and it became his duty to invite her to join him in a promenade, since the morning was a little chilly. It was impossible to feel melancholy long under such circumstances, and he soon found himself rattling away in his usual style, and predicting all kinds of delightful times at Baghdad. Lady Haigh, having once declared her pleasure, had perfect confidence in Charlie’s sense of honour, and was even a little sorry for him, and therefore she did not declare that she and Cecil were busy, and send him off to talk to the captain, a perverse habit which she had developed of late, but allowed him to remain beside her, and instruct Cecil in the habits and folk-lore of the wild tribes on the river-banks. Thus the day passed pleasantly until, towards evening, Cecil, who was looking ahead, uttered a cry of delight as the steamer swung round a bend in the river. Before them lay Baghdad, bathed in the sunset light, which brought out in all their brilliance the green and turquoise hues of the tiles with which the domes of the mosques were inlaid, and the gilded casing of the minarets; while other buildings, ordinarily most prosaic and unlovely, looked mysterious and beautiful rising from the sea of foliage which everywhere surrounded them. Palm, orange, and pomegranate trees filled the gardens which spread over the flat country as far as eye could reach, and even the ruined walls of the city, emerging here and there from the expanse of green, lost their meanness and looked imposing.

“This is really Baghdad!” said Cecil, with a sigh of contentment.

“And I am sure you are longing to walk through the enchanted streets,” said Charlie.

“Of course,” said Cecil. “When do we land, Lady Haigh? Is it soon?”

“Naturally, the steamer will stop opposite the Residency for us to land,” said Lady Haigh with dignity. “Don’t worry about your things, my dear child. Um Yusuf will see to them, and if you really like to look at Baghdad, it’s a pity you shouldn’t.”

They had reached the city now, and were passing between terraced gardens, with elaborate gateways leading to the water, and queer, brightly-painted boats bobbing about in the current. There were fanciful summer-houses in some of the gardens, and Cecil strained her eyes to catch a glimpse of the veiled beauties who ought to be reclining gracefully in the shade. Then came a more crowded quarter, with old mansions of brown brick overhanging the water, coffee-houses with highly decorated gables and terraces where companies of men were sitting smoking and talking, newer-looking dwellings with latticed balconies, and trees—trees everywhere. Cecil gazed on in breathless admiration, but her raptures were suddenly interrupted.

“There’s the dear old rag!” cried Lady Haigh, in an ecstasy of mingled patriotism and affection, and Charlie Egerton took off his hat to the Union-Jack which floated over the Residency. Cecil awoke from her dream with a start. The steamer was slowing down as it approached a great house, standing at the end of a long garden, with a terrace overlooking the water, and an avenue of aged orange-trees. The flag scarcely fluttered in the light breeze, and all the garden looked dreamlike and peaceful. Only on the terrace was there a certain amount of bustle, and presently a boat put forth from the steps and shot towards the steamer. From the pomp and circumstance which characterised this embarkation, Cecil divined that the boat carried Sir Dugald Haigh, and she began to feel rather nervous. It would be idle to deny that Charlie’s conversation had infected her with a certain amount of prejudice against her Majesty’s Consul-General at Baghdad. For this very reason she had resolved to meet him with an exaggeratedly open mind, and to look very carefully for his good points. After all, Lady Haigh’s early devotion and long affection ought to weigh more than Dr Egerton’s dislike, especially since he was so notoriously addicted to disagreeing with his superiors.

With this in her mind, Cecil stood observant in the background while Sir Dugald gained the deck and greeted his wife. She saw a thin, almost insignificant-looking man, with a skin like parchment, and a small, carefully-trimmed grey moustache. In his dress there was visible a precision so extreme as almost to appear affectation, and his manners were the perfection of elaborate politeness. Sir Dugald Haigh at Baghdad was eminently the right man in the right place. The Indian authorities who appointed him knew that he would never wantonly or ignorantly outrage the prejudices nor shock the susceptibilities of the most jealous and sensitive oriental; but they knew also, and rejoiced in the knowledge, that under the silken glove the iron hand was always ready. Sir Dugald could insist and threaten when it was necessary—nay, he could even bluster, in a dignified and most effective way—and the Pashas and Sheikhs with whom he had to deal knew that, when he had once put his foot down, they might as well try to shake the Great Pyramid as to move him.

Something of all this Cecil read in her cursory observation of him, but she had only time to hear Charlie’s muttered remark, “The very incarnation of red tape!” before she found herself summoned forward by Lady Haigh.

“And this is Miss Anstruther!” said Sir Dugald, as he bowed and shook hands. There was nothing offensive about the remark—it expressed a kindly interest, possibly admiration—but Cecil saw Sir Dugald raise his eyebrows very slightly as he uttered it. Before long she was to learn to watch his eyebrows narrowly, for they were the most expressive feature of his face, betraying all the feelings of worry, impatience, amusement, or concern, which the rest of his visage was under much too good control to show. Now they said, “Far too young! Not nearly backbone enough for such a place!” while Sir Dugald’s lips were saying—

“Welcome to Baghdad, Miss Anstruther! It is a long time since we have had the honour of a young lady’s company at the Residency.”

Then he greeted Charlie, with a courteous ease of manner, and a kindly expression of a hope that he had come to stay this time, which made Cecil decide that if the hope should not be fulfilled, the provocation would come from Charlie’s side and not from Sir Dugald’s; and then they went on shore. The Residency proved to be a fine old house, built round two courtyards, which, as Charlie told Cecil, corresponded to the account he had given her of the special functions of Sir Dugald and Lady Haigh, since one was devoted to business and the other to social purposes. The ground-floor rooms in the family courtyard were low and dark, but those on the floor above them large and airy, with broad verandahs supported on curiously carved wooden pillars. Cecil, casting a hurried glance in at the various doors as Lady Haigh took her to her room, carried away a confused memory of fretted ceilings inlaid with coloured marbles, walls panelled with looking-glasses, and gilded mouldings, and again she sighed with satisfaction. The Baghdad of good Haroun-al-Raschid had not quite disappeared yet.