ain. You long to steep yourself
in local colour. You sigh for _hidalgos, sombreros, carbonados, and
carboncillos_, why not combine business with pleasure?

'Why not take the Alhambra?'

This _was_ an idea!

Where could we be safer than under the old Moorish flag?

Philippa readily fell in with my mother's proposal. When woman has once
tasted of public admiration, when once she has stepped on the boards,
she retires without enthusiasm, even at the age of forty.

'I had thought,' said Philippa, of exhibiting myself at the Social
Science Congress, and lecturing on self-advertisement and the ethical
decline of the Moral Show business, with some remarks on waxworks. But
the Alhambra sounds ever so much more toney.'

It was decided on.

I threw away the Baedeker and Murray, and Ford's 'Spain,' on which I had
been relying for three chapters of padding and local colour. I ceased to
think of the very old churches of St. Croix and St. Seurin and a variety
of other interesting objects. I did not bother about St. Sebastian, and
the Valley of the Giralda, and Burgos, the capital of the old Castilian
kingdom, and the absorbing glories of the departed Moore. Gladly, gaily,
I completed the necessary negotiations, and found myself, with Philippa,
my mother, and many of my old _troupe_, in the dear old Alhambra, safe
under the shelter of the gay old Moorish flag.

Shake off black gloom, Basil South, and make things skip.

You have conquered Fate!

CHAPTER IX.--Saved! Saved!

GLORIOUS, wonderful Alhambra! Magical Cuadrado de Leicestero! Philippa
and I were as happy as children, and the house was full every night.

We called everything by Spanish names, and played perpetually at being
Spaniards.

The _foyer_ we named a _patio_--a space fragrant with the perfume of
oranges, which the public were always sucking, and perilous with peel.
Add to this a refreshment-room, _refectorio_, full of the rarest old
_cigarros_, and redolent of _aqua de soda and aguardiente_. Here the
_botellas_ of _aqua de soda_ were continually popping, and the _corchos_
flying with a murmur of merry voices and of mingling waters. Here half
through the night you could listen to--

The delight of happy laughter,
The delight of low replies.

With such surroundings, almost those of a sybarite, who can blame me
for being lulled into security, and telling myself that my troubles were
nearly at an end? Who can wonder at the _chateaux en Espa