" in the person of Cleek, arrived with his
snub-nosed man-servant, a kitbag, several rugs, and a bundle of golf
sticks, young Burnham-Seaforth saw no reason to alter that assertion.
For, a "silly ass"--albeit an unusually handsome one with his fair,
curling hair and his big blonde moustache--he certainly was: a lisping,
"ha-ha-ing" "don't-cher-know-ing" silly ass, whom the presence of ladies
seemed to cover with confusion and drive into a very panic of shy
embarrassment.

"_Dios!_ but he is handsome, this big, fair lieutenant!" whispered the
Spaniard to young Burnham-Seaforth. "A great, handsome fool--all beauty
and no brains, like a doll of wax!" Then she bent over and murmured
smilingly to Zuilika: "I shall make a bigger nincompoop of this big,
fair sap-head than Heaven already has done before he leaves here, just
for the sake of seeing him stammer and blush!"

Only the sad expression of Zuilika's eyes told that she so much as
heard, as she rose to greet the visitor. Garbed from head to foot in the
deep, violet-coloured stuff which is the mourning of Turkish women, her
little pointed slippers showing beneath the hem of her frock, and only
her dark, mournful eyes visible between the top of the shrouding yashmak
and the edge of her sequined snood, she made a pathetic picture as she
stood there waiting to greet the unknown visitor.

"Sir, you are welcome," she said in a voice whose modulations were not
lost upon Cleek's ears as he put forth his hand and received the tips of
her little, henna-stained fingers upon his palm. "Peace be with you, who
are of his people--he that I loved and mourn!" Then, as if overcome with
grief at the recollection of her widowhood, she plucked away her hand,
covered her eyes, and moved staggeringly out of the room. And Cleek saw
no more of her that day; but he knew when she performed her orisons
before the mummy case--as she did each morning and evening--by the
strong, pungent odour of incense drifting through the house and filling
it with a sickly scent.

Her absence seemed to make but little impression upon him, however, for,
following up a well-defined plan of action, he devoted himself wholly to
the Spanish woman, and both amazed her and gratified her vanity by
allowing her to learn that a man may be the silliest ass imaginable and
yet quite understand how to flirt and to make love to a woman. And so it
fell out that instead of "Lieutenant Rupert St. Aubyn" being elbowed out
by young