ck. "My limbs refuse
their office." She jogged against a Tunisian Jewess in a pointed hat,
and rebounded upon an enormous Riff in a tattered sheep-skin. "I can go
no farther."

"We are there! Behold the house of the Ouled!"

As he uttered the last word he burst into a bitter laugh, and drew Mrs.
Greyne, now gasping for breath, through an open doorway into a little
hall of imitation marble, with fluted pillars adorned with oilcloth, and
walls hung with imported oleographs. From a chamber on the right, near
a winding staircase covered with blue-and-white tiles, came the sound of
laughter, of song, and of a hideous music conveyed to the astonied ear
by pipes and drums.

"They are in there!" exclaimed Abdallah Jack, folding his arms, and
looking at Mrs. Greyne. "Go to your husband!"

Mrs. Greyne put her hands to her magnificent forehead, and tottered
forward. She reached the door, she pushed it, she entered. There upon a
wooden dais, surrounded by gilt mirrors and artificial roses, she beheld
her husband, in a check suit and a white Homburg hat, performing the
wildest evolutions, while opposite him a lady, smothered in coloured
silks and coins, tattooed and painted, dyed and scented, covered with
kohl and crowned with ostrich feathers, screamed a nasal chant of the
East, and bounded like an electrified monkey.

"Eustace!" cried Mrs. Greyne, leaning for support against an oleograph.

Her husband turned.

"Eustace!" she cried again. "It is I!"

He stood as if turned to stone. Mrs. Greyne hesitated, started, moved
forward to the dais, and stared upon the Ouled, who had also ceased from
dancing, and looked strangely surprised, even confused, by the great
novelist's intrusion.

"Miss Verbena!" she exclaimed. "Miss Verbena in Algiers!"

"Eugenia!" said Mr. Greyne in a husky voice, "what is this you say?
This lady is the Ouled."

A sardonic laugh came from the doorway. They turned. There stood
Abdallah Jack. He advanced roughly to the Ouled.

"Come," he said angrily. "Have we not earned the money of the stranger?
Have we not earned enough? To-morrow you shall marry me as you have
promised, and we will return to our own land, to the canal where you and
I were born. And nevermore shall the Levantine instruct the babes of
the English devils, but dwell veiled and guarded in the harem of her
master."

"Mademoiselle Verbena!" said Mr. Greyne in a more husky voice.
"But--but--your dying mother?"

"She sleeps, monsieur,