inst the comfort and regal luxury of
Jill's mode of travelling.

Surrounded by an armed guard under the absolute control of black
Mustapha, armed to the teeth, chaperoned by Mrs. Grundy in the shape
or, as I should say, represented in the shapeless person of a dusky
duenna of many moons, a good heart and a vitriolic tongue, who coyly
peeped from behind the sombre curtains of her middle-aged palanquin,
Jill started on her wedding journey. Over a carpet of flowers, through
a long lane of palm leaves, held by veiled maidens, so as to form an
arch, she passed, whilst the sweetness of the girls' voices rose to the
tops of the acacia and mimosa trees, and gigantic date palms, in the
Egyptian bridal song.

In no way did Jill's return journey across the desert and through the
mountains to the canal's edge resemble the out going.

She did it with leisure and comfort this time, to find the Arab's great
white steam yacht waiting to race her to Ismailiah.

She had looked round for the man she loved, but had seen him only when,
with great pomp and circumstance, she landed on the other side.

The whole of the town had turned out, so that the white car in which
she made the short trajet between the landing-place and the station
passed between a lane lined with male faces, dusky, dark brown, and
light tan, thousands of soft eyes sparkling over the all-hiding,
all-attractive yashmak, and a dotted line, well in the forefront of the
leather-brown, European physiognomies, of those who nudged and pointed,
exclaiming aloud, so that their words carried even into the interior of
the closed car, upon their luck of seeing a _real native show_.

With grave obeisance to the woman, Hahmed the Arab had entered his
special train, which preceded Jill's by ten minutes, so that when she
arrived at Cairo Central Station, surrounded by her armed guard, and
with her duenna rocking painfully by her side in a pair of over small
shoes, a little scared at the sea of faces, and the echo of the voices
of those who stood outside, kept in order by the swash-buckling native
police of fez ornamented heads, she had stood transfixed, wondering
what on earth she should do next.

Verily, the Eastern can carry off a situation which would undoubtedly
fill the Western with consternation.

Perhaps the clothing has as much to do with it as any national traits,
for surely no man in stove-pipe trousers, and all that goes to the
well-looking of these garments, could h