h early Victorian days that
he had to sacrifice his military glory at the shrine of his perennial
youth.

Mr. Cecil Brown--to take the names in the chance order in which
they appear upon the passenger list--was a young diplomatist from a
Continental Embassy, a man slightly tainted with the Oxford manner, and
erring upon the side of unnatural and inhuman refinement, but full of
interesting talk and cultured thought. He had a sad, handsome face, a
small wax-tipped moustache, a low voice and a listless manner, which was
relieved by a charming habit of suddenly lighting up into a rapid smile
and gleam when anything caught his fancy. An acquired cynicism was
eternally crushing and overlying his natural youthful enthusiasms, and
he ignored what was obvious while expressing keen appreciation for what
seemed to the average man to be either trivial or unhealthy. He chose
Walter Pater for his travelling author, and sat all day, reserved but
affable, under the awning, with his novel and his sketch-book upon a
campstool beside him. His personal dignity prevented him from making
advances to others, but if they chose to address him, they found him a
courteous and amiable companion.

The Americans formed a group by themselves. John H. Headingly was a New
Englander, a graduate of Harvard, who was completing his education by
a tour round the world. He stood for the best type of young
American,--quick, observant, serious, eager for knowledge, and fairly
free from prejudice, with a fine ballast of unsectarian but earnest
religious feeling, which held him steady amid all the sudden gusts of
youth. He had less of the appearance and more of the reality of culture
than the young Oxford diplomatist, for he had keener emotions though
less exact knowledge. Miss Adams and Miss Sadie Adams were aunt and
niece, the former a little, energetic, hard-featured Bostonian old-maid,
with a huge surplus of unused love behind her stern and swarthy
features. She had never been from home before, and she was now busy
upon the self-imposed task of bringing the East up to the standard of
Massachusetts. She had hardly landed in Egypt before she realised that
the country needed putting to rights, and since the conviction struck
her she had been very fully occupied. The saddle-galled donkeys, the
starved pariah dogs, the flies round the eyes of the babies, the naked
children, the importunate begging, the ragged, untidy women,--they were
all challenges to her cons