This time next month I shall
probably be _en route_ for Egypt."

"For Egypt!" she repeated; and a chorus of voices instantly echoed the
exclamation. "For Egypt! Nonsense! You are jesting."

"No, I am not jesting," said Victor Clare, lifting himself on one
elbow: "I am in earnest. I received a letter from ----" (naming a
distinguished officer) "to-day, offering me a position if I would join
him in Cairo. I say nothing about what the position is, because my
mind is not yet made up to accept it; and even if it were, such things
should not be published on the house-tops. But if anybody here has a
fancy for joining the army of the khedive, I may be able to give him a
few important particulars."

Nobody responded. The gentlemen seemed to prefer enlisting under Mrs.
Lancaster's banner for the White Sulphur. The ladies shrugged their
shoulders and said the idea was dreadful, Victor Clare sank back in
the grass and addressed himself to Miss Milbourne.

"There is nothing else for me to do," he said in an argumentative
tone. "I only waste money on the impoverished acres of that old place
of mine. The house itself is falling down over my head. What remains,
then, but to go forth and tempt Fortune to do her best--or worst? At
least the profession of arms has been in all ages the calling of a
gentleman."

For a minute Eleanor Milbourne did not speak. She sat in the starlight
a graceful, shadowy figure, furling and unfurling her fan with a
slightly nervous motion. Perhaps she was uncertain what to answer.
But at last she spoke in a very low tone: "Yet you said you had not
decided."

"No, I have not decided. In truth, I have been rooted in idleness and
indifference so long that I scarcely feel as if I cared enough about
myself to take advantage of the offer. Then I cannot bring myself to
think of selling Claremont, though I know that a penniless man has no
right to the luxury of sentimental attachments. If I were in Egypt
it would not matter to me that some upstart speculator owned the old
place."

"I think it would," said Miss Milbourne.

"No, it would _not_" was the obstinate reply. "I should take care
to find a lotos as soon as I reached the Nile. Whoever eats of that
forgets his past life, you know. I have scant reason for wishing to
remember mine," he added a little bitterly.

"Memory is certainly more often a sting than a pleasure," said Miss
Milbourne. "It is strange," she added, "that we should both have
thought o