wered. "I don't like the
coloring; it hurts my eyes."

"It shows how extremes meet," the young man rejoined. "Instead of coming
to the West we seem to have gone to the East. The way the sky touches
the house-tops is just like Cairo; and the red and blue sign-boards
patched over the face of everything remind one of Mahometan
decorations."

"The young women are not Mahometan," said his companion. "They can't be
said to hide their faces. I never saw anything so bold."

"Thank Heaven they don't hide their faces!" cried Felix. "Their faces
are uncommonly pretty."

"Yes, their faces are often very pretty," said the Baroness, who was
a very clever woman. She was too clever a woman not to be capable of
a great deal of just and fine observation. She clung more closely than
usual to her brother's arm; she was not exhilarated, as he was; she said
very little, but she noted a great many things and made her reflections.
She was a little excited; she felt that she had indeed come to a strange
country, to make her fortune. Superficially, she was conscious of a good
deal of irritation and displeasure; the Baroness was a very delicate
and fastidious person. Of old, more than once, she had gone, for
entertainment's sake and in brilliant company, to a fair in a provincial
town. It seemed to her now that she was at an enormous fair--that the
entertainment and the disagreements were very much the same. She found
herself alternately smiling and shrinking; the show was very curious,
but it was probable, from moment to moment, that one would be jostled.
The Baroness had never seen so many people walking about before; she
had never been so mixed up with people she did not know. But little by
little she felt that this fair was a more serious undertaking. She went
with her brother into a large public garden, which seemed very pretty,
but where she was surprised at seeing no carriages. The afternoon was
drawing to a close; the coarse, vivid grass and the slender tree-boles
were gilded by the level sunbeams--gilded as with gold that was fresh
from the mine. It was the hour at which ladies should come out for an
airing and roll past a hedge of pedestrians, holding their parasols
askance. Here, however, Eugenia observed no indications of this custom,
the absence of which was more anomalous as there was a charming avenue
of remarkably graceful, arching elms in the most convenient contiguity
to a large, cheerful street, in which, evidently, among t