eutenant Rupert St. Aubyn, son of an
old army friend, Zuilika was the first to suggest the very thing he was
fishing for.

"Ah, let him come here, dear friend," she said in that sad, sweetly
modulated voice which so often wrung this susceptible old heart. "There
is plenty of room!--plenty, alas now--and any friend of yours can only
be a friend of mine. He will not annoy. Let him come here."

"Yes, let him," supplemented young Burnham-Seaforth, speaking with his
eyes on Senorita Rosario, who seemed nervous and ill-pleased by the news
of the expected arrival. "He won't have to be entertained by us if he
only comes to see the pater; and we can easily crowd him aside if he
tries to thrust himself upon us--a fellow with a name like 'Rupert St.
Aubyn' is bound to be a silly ass." And when, in the late afternoon,
"Lieutenant Rupert St. Aubyn," in the person of Cleek, arrived with his
snubnosed manservant, a kit-bag, 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-knowing" 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--you are most 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 t