led him there by way of many tile-paved corridors, lit by hanging Arab
lamps suspended from roofs of arabesqued cedar-wood. They went up or
down marble steps, into quaint little alcoved rooms furnished with
nothing but divans and low tables or dower chests crusted with Syrian
mother-o'-pearl, on into rooms where brocade-hung walls were covered
with Arab musical instruments of all kinds, or long-necked Moorish guns
patterned with silver, ivory and coral. Here and there as they passed,
were garden glimpses, between embroidered curtains, looking through
windows always barred with greenish wrought iron, so old as to be rarely
beautiful; and some small windows had no curtains, but were thickly
frilled outside with the violent crimson of bougainvillaea, or fringed
with tassels of wistaria, loop on loop of amethysts. High above these
windows, which framed flowery pictures, were other windows, little and
jewelled, mere plaques of filigree workmanship, fine as carved ivory or
silver lace, and lined with coloured glass of delicate tints--gold,
lilac, and pale rose.

"Here's the drawing-room at last," said Nevill, "and here's my aunt."

"If you can call it a drawing-room," objected a gently complaining
voice. "A filled-in court, where ghosts of murdered slaves come and
moan, while you have your tea. How do you do, Mr. Knight? I'm delighted
you've taken pity on Nevill. He's never so happy as when he's showing a
new friend the house--except when he's obtained an old tile, or a new
monster of some sort, for his collection."

"In me, he kills two birds with one stone," said Stephen, smiling, as he
shook the hand of a tiny lady who looked rather like an elderly fairy
disguised in a cap, that could have been born nowhere except north of
the Tweed.

She had delicate little features which had been made to fit a pretty
child, and had never grown up. Her hair, of a reddish yellow, had faded
to a yellowish white, which by a faint fillip of the imagination could
be made to seem golden in some lights. Her eyes were large and round,
and of a china-blue colour; her eyebrows so arched as to give her an
expression of perpetual surprise, her forehead full, her cheekbones high
and pink, her small, pursed mouth of the kind which prefers to hide a
sense of humour, and then astonish people with it when they have ceased
to believe in its existence. If her complexion had not been netted all
over with a lacework of infinitesimal wrinkles, she would hav