didn't!'

'Let us hope she doesn't know too much about him,' I cried gaily, 'or
there will be nothing to tell!'

'Oh, really and truly very little!' said Cecily, 'but as soon as we
heard papa would be stationed here Aunt Emma made me read up about those
old Moguls and people. I think I remember the dynasty. Baber, wasn't he
the first? And then Humayon, and after him Akbar, and then Jehangir, and
then Shah Jehan. But I've forgotten every date but Akbar's.'

She smiled her smile of brilliant health and even spirits as she made
the damaging admission, and she was so good to look at, sitting there
simple and wholesome and fresh, peeling her banana with her well-shaped
fingers, that we swallowed the dynasty as it were whole, and smiled back
upon her. John, I may say, was extremely pleased with Cecily; he
said she was a very satisfactory human accomplishment. One would
have thought, positively, the way he plumed himself over his handsome
daughter, that he alone was responsible for her. But John, having
received his family, straightway set off with his Staff on a tour of
inspection, and thereby takes himself out of this history. I sometimes
think that if he had stayed--but there has never been the lightest
recrimination between us about it, and I am not going to hint one now.

'Did you read,' asked Dacres, 'what he and the Court poet wrote over the
entrance gate to the big mosque at Fattehpur-Sikri? It's rather nice.
"The world is a looking-glass, wherein the image has come and is
gone--take as thine own nothing more than what thou lookest upon."'

My daughter's thoughtful gaze was, of course, fixed upon the speaker,
and in his own glance I saw a sudden ray of consciousness; but Cecily
transferred her eyes to the opposite wall, deeply considering, and while
Dacres and I smiled across the table, I saw that she had perceived no
reason for blushing. It was a singularly narrow escape.

'No,' she said, 'I didn't; what a curious proverb for an emperor to
make! He couldn't possibly have been able to see all his possessions at
once.'

'If you have finished,' Dacres addressed her, 'do let me show you what
your plain and immediate duty is to the garden. The garden waits for
you--all the roses expectant--'

'Why, there isn't one!' cried Cecily, pinning on her hat. It was
pleasing, and just a trifle pathetic, the way he hurried her out of the
scope of any little dart; he would not have her even within range of
amused observation.