rge
dewy eyes-imploring eyes, she called them--might soften a stone, and her
fair waving hair was as soft as her nature. Add to this her full, supple
figure--and how perfectly she dressed, how exquisitely she sang and
struck the lute! It was not for nothing that she was courted by every
youth of rank in Constantinople--and if the old Mukaukas could but hear
her laugh! There was not a sound on earth more clear, more glad than
Heliodora's laugh. She was not indeed remarkable for intellect, but no
one could call her a simpleton, and your very clever women were not to
every man's taste.

So, when they were to travel to Egypt, Martina took it for granted that
Heliodora must go with them, and that the flirtation which had made her
favorite the talk of the town must, in Memphis, become courtship in
earnest. Then, when she heard at Alexandria that the Mukaukas was lately
dead, she regarded the game as won. Now they were in Memphis, Orion was
sitting before her, and the young man had invited her and her following
of above twenty persons to stay in his house. It was a foregone
conclusion that the travellers were to accept this bidding as prescribed
by the laws of hospitality, and preparations for the move were
immediately set on foot.

Justinus meanwhile explained what had brought them to Egypt, and begged
Orion's assistance. The young man had known the senator's nephew well as
one of the most brilliant and amiable youths of the capital, and he was
sincerely distressed to be forced to inform his friends that Amru, who
could easily have procured the release of Narses, was to start within two
days for Medina, while he himself was compelled to set out on a journey
that very evening, at an hour he could not name.

He saw how greatly this firmly-expressed determination agitated and
disturbed the old couple, and the senator's urgency led him to tell them,
under the pledge of strict secrecy, what business it was that took him
away and what a perilous enterprise he had before him.

He began his story confident of his orthodox guests' sympathy; but to his
amazement they both disapproved of the undertaking, and not, as they
declared, on his account only or for the sake of the help they had
counted on.

The senator reminded him that he was the natural chief of the Egyptian
population in Memphis, and that, by such a scheme, he was undermining his
influence with those whose leader he was by right and duty as his
father's son. His ambiti