ar all round with
familiar gesture, allowing her light hand to run over the sun-tanned
skin.

That Ethiopian face on which the muscles stood out in the very
intoxication of health, with its long drooping eyelashes as of some deer
being gently stroked in its sleep; the bold profile of the girl as she
leaned over those strange features in order to verify their proportions;
then a violent, irresistible gesture, clutching the delicate hand as it
passed and pressing it to two thick, passionate lips. Jenkins saw all
that in one red flash.

The noise that he made in entering caused the two personages instantly
to resume their respective positions, and, in the strong light which
dazzled his prying eyes, he saw the young girl standing before him,
indignant, stupefied.

"Who is that? Who has taken the liberty?" and the Nabob, on his
platform, with his collar turned down, petrified, monumental.

Jenkins, a little abashed, frightened by his own audacity, murmured some
excuses. He had something very urgent to say to M. Jansoulet, a piece of
news which was most important and would suffer no delay. "He knew upon
the best authority that certain decorations were to be bestowed on the
16th of March."

Immediately the face of the Nabob, that for a moment had been frowning,
relaxed.

"Ah! can it be true?"

He abandoned his pose. The thing was worth the trouble, _que diable!_
M. de la Perriere, a secretary of the department involved had been
commissioned by the Empress to visit the Bethlehem Refuge. Jenkins had
come in search of the Nabob to take him to see the secretary at the
Tuileries and to appoint a day. This visit to Bethlehem, it meant the
cross for him.

"Quick, let us start, my dear doctor. I follow you."

He was no longer angry with Jenkins for having disturbed him, and he
knotted his cravat feverishly, forgetting in his new emotions how he had
been upset a moment earlier, for ambition with him came before all else.

While the two men were talking in a half-whisper, Felicia, standing
motionless before them, with quivering nostrils and her lip curled in
contempt, watched them with an air of saying, "Well, I am waiting."

Jansoulet apologized for being obliged to interrupt the sitting; but a
visit of the most extreme importance--She smiled in pity.

"Don't mention it, don't mention it. At the point which we have reached
I can work without you."

"Oh, yes," said the doctor, "the work is almost completed."

He added