over Queen Anne, which finally ousted the great Sarah Jennings,
Duchess of Marlborough, brought disturbance into English politics and
ruin to the fortune of the Jacobites.

But at times there was a look in her mistress' eyes and a certain
atmosphere radiating from the frail little person before which Hobson
quailed, so that she said quite gently, "Tea and one letter, your
grace," when she found her sitting at the open window, looking out at
the morning sky.

But although she spoke gently and tucked an extra shawl about the bent
shoulders with a tender hand, she was thinking viciously all the same
over her mistresses leniency towards her god-daughter.

"I wish the young lady could be safely married to that proper English
gentleman. One can see he wants her, but she doesn't seem to know her
own mind. Too pleased by half she is, to my thinking, with this
country and the silly nonsense of their nasty, heathen ways!"

And she left the room with a swish of starched petticoat, when Damaris,
who had just returned from her desert ride, entered to greet her
godmother.

She knelt at the side of the chair and, encircling her in her strong
young arms, laid her cheek against the old lady's, and knelt without
movement, looking out to the desert, whilst one wrinkled old hand
stroked her head and the other turned the pages of the letter.

A piteous letter of appeal from a woman whose love had brought forth
the bitterest of bitter fruit.

". . . _Is_ there a way out, Petite _Maman_?" wrote Jill, the English
wife of Hahmed Sheikh el-Umbar. "Will you undertake the long journey
and come and see me, for who knows if together we could not find a way
to ensure my boy's happiness? I would come to you, only Hugh is near
you, and our men in the East tolerate no interference from their
women-folk. My messenger will wait for your answer. I am overwhelmed
with foreboding for Hugh my first-born. If you can, come to me.
JILL."

And as the sun rose the old lady still sat near the window, trying to
come to a decision.

Could she turn a deaf ear to the woman she had known as a girl almost
twenty-five years ago? Could she, on the other hand, go to her and
risk leaving the girl at her side exposed to the indescribable appeal
of the East? Should she send her back to England, or take her as far
as Luxor and leave her there under the social wing of Lady Thistleton?

"Have you learned any more about the Arab who follows at a distance