as the Turkish law does not allow the desertion or
dismissal of a cadine unless she be provided for, Zouhra is to be exiled
to Rhodes. The pasha has established there for his own use, a kind of
Botany Bay, which is a place both of retirement and rustication for his
invalided wives who have lost their freshness with age. The place is an
old abbey with spacious gardens planted with mimosas and orange trees,
and was purchased by auction for some ten thousand francs. The island is
delightful, and provisions are to be had there for nothing, according to
what my uncle tells me. Judge for yourself: fowls cost twopence each,
and everything else is to be had at correspondingly low prices. There
are already eleven women there, and it does not cost more than nine
thousand francs a year to keep them all on a proper footing, including
the board and wages of their servants.

Find me among our own boasted institutions any one to be compared with
that of my uncle--an institution established to provide for similar
contingencies, and the arrangements of which are equally good.

[Illustration: ]

[Illustration: ]

CHAPTER XV.

For the last three days that unworthy girl Zouhra has been on her way to
Rhodes.

Well, what does that matter? I admit that I have only three wives left,
that's all. And what of that? Is it fitting that you, my dearest friend,
should try to make me feel ashamed of it?

While exercising your facetiousness, it seems to me that you especially
level your irony at certain other worries necessarily occasioned by the
position of Kondje-Gul and what you call the wooing of the "fierce
Kiusko." Ye Gods! so I have a rival. Really, you make me laugh!

I fancy, however, that all this will inevitably end in a duel between
us, which indeed, as time goes on, seems to me quite unavoidable.

One evening when I arrived rather late at Teral House by reason of one
of those tedious dinners with which Anna Campbell's leaves-out were
celebrated, I found Kondje-Gul quite downcast, and her eyes red with
crying. I had left her a few hours before in the best of spirits, and
delighted about a pretty little pony which I had given her in the
morning, and which we had been trying. Surprised and alarmed at such a
sudden grief as she evinced, and which had caused her to shed tears, I
anxiously questioned her about it.

Directly I began speaking to her I saw that she wanted to conceal from
me the cause of her affliction: but I pre