days, returning from his yachting trip to the Canaries, and would live in
the Alcazar which was being got ready for him. From now until the day
after his departure, the Alcazar was to be closed to the public.

This was just, and as it should be, admitted the Cherub; but we were not
the public. We were special ones, even as special as the Duke of Carmona
who would entertain his friends there that evening. Surely the guardian
must know that the O'Donnel family was on terms of friendship with the
Governor of the Alcazar, who would suffer severe pains of the heart if he
heard that such visitors had been turned away. Thus the good Cherub
continued to whisper. And whether or no coin changed hands I cannot tell;
but certain it is that in less than the five minutes allowed by Pilar for
the working of her father's fascinations, we were inside the forbidden
precincts, accompanied by a lamb-like attendant.

It was from him that we must learn what we wished to know; but it would be
unwise to betray a premature thirst for information on any subject save
the history or beauties of the Alcazar. Asking a question now and then of
our guide, we wandered from _patio_ to _patio_, from room to room of that
wonderful royal dwelling once called "the house of Caesar." Many a rude
shock and vicissitude had it sustained when Goths fought for it with
Romans, when Moors seized it from Christians, when Christians won it back,
and conducted themselves within its jewelled walls in ways unworthy of
their faith and boasted chivalry, yet the beauties which Pedro the Cruel
restored in admiring imitation of the Alhambra, glowed still with undimmed
splendour, in the sunshine of this twentieth century afternoon.

If I had not been preoccupied by my own private and extremely modern
anxieties, I should have let imagination work the spell it longed to work,
and make of me some humble character gliding shadow-like, but ever
observant, through tale after tale of the "Arabian Nights." In just such a
palace as this had the Seven Calenders lost each an eye; behind any one of
these fretted arches might one come upon a king, half man, half jet-black
marble. The most captious of genies could have found no fault with the
Hall of the Ambassadors save the absence of the roc's egg; and despite my
impatience the storied enchantment of the place soon had me in its grip.

Scheherezade, I said to myself, could have invented no tales to surpass in
thrilling interest the scene