e secretly
returned thanks that her daughters were not as others.

* * * * * *

But later, far into the night, Damaris stood at her window, with her
arms round the bulldog's neck.

"You're the only one who _really_ loves me, Well-Well. Everybody else
run away and leaves me. I'm--I'm, so unhappy!"

Tears stood in the big eyes as she flung out her arms and cried in a
sudden passionate intensity, "_Marraine_! _Marraine_! I want you--I
want you! If you loved me, you would come to me, because I want you
so!"

CHAPTER XXIII

"_The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree
I planted; they have torn me, and I bleed.
I should have known what fruit would spring
from such a seed_."

BYRON.

Olivia Duchess of Longacres stood on the balcony of the hotel, looking
down at the cortege which had escorted the wife of the Sheik el-Umbar
from the House 'an Mahabbah some way out in the desert and which was
making its way as best it could through the tortuous, narrow, unpaved
streets of Khargegh town.

The white and only wife of the great Arab travelled _en reine_; two
outriders with modern rifles slung across the shoulder and brandishing
throwing-spears, caused consternation amongst the spectators as at a
word or touch of the unspurred foot they made their magnificent horses
rear and back and plunge.

One trick or feat had caused the heavens to be rent with screams of
pure joy and shouts of "_Wallahi-el-azim_," "_Ma sha-Allah_" and other
references to the might and glory of the Almighty.

You do not often see this feat of strength and dexterity, and when you
do, it brings your heart almost out of your body and has an exhibition
of tent-pegging simply beaten to a frazzle.

A spectator of the tender age of three, clothed--as it was a day of
festival--in _tarbusch_ and voluminous robe girt about him with a
cummerbund--on ordinary days he would have been clothed in nature and
girt in dirt--toddled straight into the middle of a square, just as the
outriders charged across it. There was no room for them to turn, so
packed were the places where the sidewalks should have been, neither
was there time in which to rein in their horses. Women shrieked and
beat their breasts, men looked on at the inevitable tragedy with the
composure of the sterner sex.

The babe stood stock-still.

And Yussuf the outrider, bending low on his saddle, drove straight down
upon it, gather