left the table my aunt said,

"Let us take a turn in the grounds."

She took my arm and we started off. I won't trouble you with a
description of this walk, in the course of which my aunt and I succeeded
in improving our acquaintance. We soon grew to understand each other
thoroughly. With supreme tact, and without apparent design on her part,
she had led me on by discreet questions to give her, before a quarter of
an hour had passed, a complete catalogue from A. to Z. of all my
studies, my tastes, and my pursuits, including of course my youthful
escapades, which made her smile more than once.

In this outpouring I excepted, as you may be sure, the revelations of my
career as a pasha. My uncle walked close to us, but left us to talk
together. One might have thought that he was resuming his marital
duties, interrupted only the evening before, without their course having
been disturbed by any appreciable incident. All at once, we arrived at
the foot-path which leads to the Turkish house.

"Ah! let us go into Kasre-El-Nouzha!" said my aunt.

At this I glanced at my uncle with an air of distress; he, without
wincing in the least, said:

"The communicating door is walled up. Kasre-El-Nouzha is let."

"Let!" she exclaimed; "To whom?"

"To an important personage, Mohammed-Azis, a friend of mine from
Constantinople. You do not know him."

"You ungrateful wretch!" she continued with a laugh: "that's the way you
observe my memory, is it?"

She did not press the subject. You may guess what a relief that was to
me.

After we had strolled about the grounds for an hour, my aunt Eudoxia had
made a complete conquest of me. But although everything about her
excited my curiosity, I had put very few questions to her, not wishing
from motives of delicacy to appear entirely ignorant of her history;
such ignorance, indeed, would have appeared strange in a nephew. She
seemed quite disposed, however, to answer all my questions without any
fencing, and to treat me as an intimate friend. What I felt most
surprised at was the attitude of my uncle, who had never said any more
to me about her than about my aunt Cora of Les Grands Palmiers. There
reigned betwixt them the affectionate manners of the happiest possible
couple; they discussed the past, and I could see that their union had
never been weakened or affected, notwithstanding my uncle's Mahometan
proceedings, which she really appears never to have suspected. I
discovered that sh