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Page 12
"I will be ready in ten minutes," she promised, springing to her
feet.
The forgotten letters scattered like a fall of snow and the Captain
stooped quickly for them, hiding the flash of exultation in his
face. He thrust the letters rather hurriedly upon her.
"Good!... But need you wait for a _toilette_ when you are so--so
_ravissante_ now?"
He gazed with frank appreciation at the linen suit she was wearing,
but she shook her head laughingly at him. "To be interesting to a
foreign lady I must have interesting clothes," she avowed. "I shan't
be ten minutes--really."
"Then the car will be in waiting. I will give your name to the
chauffeur and he will approach you." He thought a minute, and then
said, quickly, "And I will leave a note for Madame Eversham at the
desk to inform her of your destination and to express my regret that
she is not here to accept the invitation." His voice was flavored
with droll irony. "In ten minutes--_bien s�r_?"
She confirmed it most positively, and it really was not quite
eighteen when she stepped out on the veranda, a vision, a positively
devastating vision in soft and filmy white, with a soft and filmy
hat all white lace and a pink rose. It is to be hoped that she did
not know how she looked. Otherwise there would have been no excuse
for her and she should have been summarily haled to the nearest
justice, with all other breakers of the peace, and condemned to good
conduct and Shaker bonnets for the rest of her life. The rose on the
hat, with such a rose of a face beneath the hat, was sheer wanton
cruelty to mankind.
It brought the heart into the throat of one young man who was
reading his paper beneath the striped awning, when he was not
watching, cat-like, the streets and the hotel door. He dropped the
paper with an agitated rustle and half rose to his feet; his eyes,
alert and humorous gray-blue eyes, lighted with eagerness. His hand
flew up to his hat.
He did not need to take it off. She did not even see him. She was
hurrying forward to the steps, following a long, lean Arab, some
dragoman, apparently, in resplendent pongee robes, who opened the
door of a limousine for her. The next instant he slammed the door
upon her, mounted the front seat, and the car rolled away.
CHAPTER III
AT THE PALACE
That limousine utterly routed the tiny little qualm which had been
furtively worming into Arlee's thrill of adventure. Nothing very
strange or out-of-the-way, she thought, could be connected with such
a modern car; it presented every symptom of effete civilization.
Against the upholstery of delicate gray flamed the scarlet
poinsettias hanging in wall vases of crystal overlaid with silver
tracery; the mirror which confronted her was framed in silver, and
beneath it a tiny cabinet revealed a frivolous store of powders and
pins and scents. Decidedly the Oriental widow of said sequestration
had a car very much up to times. The only difference which it
presented from the cars of any modern city or of any modern lady was
in the smallness of the window panes, whose contracted size
confirmed the stories of the restrictions which Arlee had been told
were imposed upon Moslem ladies by even those emancipated masculine
relatives who conceded cars.
She peered out of the diminutive windows at the throng of life in
the unquiet streets as they halted for the passing of a camel laden
with bricks and stones from a demolished building; the poor thing
teetered precariously past under such a back-breaking load that the
girl felt it would have been a mercy to add the last straw and be
done with it. After it bobbed what was apparently an animated load
of hay, so completely were this other camel's legs hidden by his
smothering burden.
Then the car shot impatiently forward, passing a dog cart full of
fair-haired English children, the youngest clasped in the arms of a
dark-skinned nurse, and behind the cart ran an indefatigable _sais_,
bare-legged and sinewy, his red headdress and gold-embroidered
jacket and blue bloomers flashing in the sun. On the sidewalk a
party of American tourists were capitulating to a post-card vender,
and ahead of them a victoria load of German sightseers careened
around the corner in the charge of a determined dragoman.
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