ished with artistic taste.
The garden had amazed her by the care lavished on it; she had seen
a hump-backed gardener and several children at work in it. A strange
party-for every one of them, like their chief, was in some way deformed
or crippled.

The plot of ground--which extended towards the river to the road-way
for foot passengers, vehicles and the files of men towing the
Nile-boats--was but narrow, and bounded on either side by extensive
premises. Not far from the spot where it lay nearest to the river was
the bridge of boats connecting Memphis with the island of Rodah. To
the right was the magnificent residence--a palace indeed--belonging
to Susannah; to the left was an extensive grove, where tall palms,
sycamores with spreading foliage, and dense thickets of blue-green
tamarisk trees cast their shade. Above this bower of splendid shrubs and
ancient trees rose a long, yellow building crowned with a turret; and
this too was not unknown to her, for she had often heard it spoken of
in her uncle's house, and had even gone there now and then escorted by
Perpetua. It was the convent of St. Cecilia, the refuge of the last
nuns of the orthodox creed left in Memphis; for, though all the other
sisterhoods of her confession had long since been banished, these had
been allowed to remain in their old home, not only because they were
famous sick-nurses, a distinction common to all the Melchite orders,
but even more because the decaying municipality could not afford to
sacrifice the large tax they annually paid to it. This tax was the
interest on a considerable capital bequeathed to the convent by a
certain wise predecessor of the Mukaukas', with the prudent proviso,
ratified under the imperial seal of Theodosius II., that if the convent
were at any time broken up, this endowment, with the land and buildings
which it likewise owed to the generosity of the same benefactor, should
become the property of the Christian emperor at that time reigning.

Mukaukas George, notwithstanding his well-founded aversion for
everything Melchite, had taken good care not to press this useful
Sisterhood too hardly, or to deprive his impoverished capital of its
revenues only to throw them into the hands of the wealthy Moslems. The
title-deed on which the Sisters relied was good; and the governor,
who was a good lawyer as well as a just man, had not only left them
unmolested, but in spite of his fears--during the last few years--for
his own safety