steamer. There were
two figures in English dress, though one wore the tarboosh. The figure
shorter and smaller than the other she recognised. This was Donovan
Pasha. She need not write her letter to him, then. He would be sure to
visit her. Disapprove of him as she did from one stand-point, he
always excited in her feelings of homesickness, of an old life, full
of interests--music, drama, art, politics, diplomacy, the court, the
hunting-field, the quiet house-party. He troubled her in a way too, for
his sane certainty, set against her aspiring credulity, arrested, even
commanded, her sometimes.

Instinctively she put out her hand to gather in flying threads of hair,
she felt at the pearl fastening of her collar, she looked at her brown
shoes and her dress, and was satisfied. She was spotless. And never
had her face shone--really shone--to such advantage. It had not now the
brilliant colours of the first years. The climate, her work in hospital
building, her labours against slavery, had touched her with a little
whiteness. She was none the less good to see.

Who was this striding along with Donovan Pasha, straight towards her
house? No one she had ever seen in Egypt, and yet in manner like some
one she had seen before--a long time before. Her mind flashed back
through the years to the time when she was a girl, and visited old
friends of her father in a castle looking towards Skaw Fell, above the
long valley of the Nidd. A kind of mist came before her eyes now.

When she really saw again, they were at the steps of the veranda, and
Donovan Pasha's voice was greeting her. Then, as, without a word but
with a welcoming smile, she shook hands with Dicky, her look was held,
first by a blank arrest of memory, then by surprise.

Dicky turned for his office of introduction but was stayed by the look
of amusement in his friend's face, and by the amazed recognition in that
of My Lady. He stepped back with an exclamation, partly of chagrin.
He saw that this recognition was no coincidence, so far as the man was
concerned, though the woman had been surprised in a double sense. He
resented the fact that Kingsley Bey had kept this from him--he had
the weakness of small-statured men and of diplomatic people who have
reputations for knowing and doing. The man, all smiling, held out his
hand, and his look was quizzically humorous as he said:

"You scarcely looked to see me here, Lady May?" Her voice trembled with
pleasure. "No, of cour