d
chattering Arabic, only a word of which Victoria could catch here and
there. As he chattered, other men came running out, some of them
Negroes, all very dark, and they vied with one another in humble kissing
of the master's person, at any spot convenient to their lips.

Politely, though not too eagerly, he made the gracious return of seeming
to kiss the back of his own hand, or his fingers, where they had been
touched by the welcoming mouths, but in reality he kissed air. With a
gesture, he stopped the salutations at last, and asked for the Caid, to
whom, he said, he had written, sending his letter by the diligence.

Then there were passionate jabberings of regret. The Caid, was away, had
been away for days, fighting the locusts on his other farm, west of
Aumale, where there was grain to save. But the letter had arrived, and
had been sent after him, immediately, by a man on horseback. This
evening he would certainly return to welcome his honoured guest. The
word was "guest," not "guests," and Victoria understood that she and
Lella M'Barka would not see the master of the house. So it had been at
the other two houses: so in all probability it would be at every house
along their way unless, as she still hoped, they had already come to the
end of the journey.

The wide open gates showed a large, bare courtyard, the farmhouse, which
was built round it, being itself the wall. On the outside, no windows
were visible except those in the towers, and a few tiny square apertures
for ventilation, but the yard was overlooked by a number of small glass
eyes, all curtained.

As the carriage was driven in, large yellow dogs gathered round it,
barking; but the men kicked them away, and busied themselves in chasing
the animals off to a shed, their white-clad backs all religiously turned
as Si Maieddine helped the ladies to descend. Behind a closed window a
curtain was shaking; and M'Barka had not yet touched her feet to the
ground when a negress ran out of a door that opened in the same distant
corner of the house. She was unveiled, like Lella M'Barka's servants in
Algiers, and, with Fafann, she almost carried the tired invalid towards
the open door. Victoria followed, quivering with suspense. What waited
for her behind that door? Would she see Saidee, after all these years of
separation?

"I think I'm dying," moaned Lella M'Barka. "They will never take me away
from this house alive. White Rose, where art thou? I need thy hand und