oner,
unpleasantly reminiscent of another tea time in Cairo, ten days
before, but even with her resentment of this American girl's
intrusion into her long-cherished plans, she could not prevent the
softening of her regard as she gazed upon her.

"You don't look as if you had been riding very hard at the Tombs of
the Kings," she observed, in reluctant admiration.

"Oh, but we have! We did quite a lot of Tombs--not anything like
thoroughly, of course!--and then we rode back early and made
ourselves tidy for your tea party," Arlee blithely explained, and
Miss Falconer perceived that her brother Robert had returned to the
hotel without seeking them out, had arrayed himself in fresh white
flannels and returned to the boat to escort Miss Beecher across the
road into the hotel garden.

Absently she sighed. Her eyes fell away from the peach-blossom
prettiness of Arlee's lovely face to the subtle simplicity of her
white frock of loosely woven silk, and she wondered if that heavy
embroidery meant money--or merely spending money. And then she
looked across at Lady Claire, and sighed again for her dream of an
aristocratic alliance.

"Mrs. Eversham--?" she thought to inquire.

"They're having the vicar--or is it the rector?--to tea. They asked
him this morning before your message came," Arlee explained. She did
not explain that the vicar, or the rector, had imagined, in
accepting, that she, too, was to be of that tea party on the boat
and was even now inquiring zealously of her of the Evershams.

"Here's Mr. Hill," said Lady Claire.

Miss Falconer stirred; there was room for the fifth chair between
her and Arlee. Lady Claire also stirred; there was room between her
and Robert Falconer. And there Billy B. Hill seated himself after a
general exchange of greetings.

"How were the bazaars?" said Arlee gaily across the table.

"You mean the department store of Mr. Isaac Cohen," Billy laughed
back. "They are all under him, you know."

"Not _really_!" Falconer exclaimed, in disillusionment. "It rather
takes it out, doesn't it, to know it is so commercialized."

"What did you expect--it is the twentieth century," Miss Falconer
retorted, putting aside her knitting as the tea things arrived.

"Sometimes it is," said Arlee.

"I think it's more so than ever, here," declared Lady Claire.
"Egypt's so _frightfully_ civilized----"

"Not when you're camping in the desert."

Again that funny little smile flitted over Arlee's face;