the glow of those fierce noon-suns; it has been tossed by the sirocco, it has been steeped in reeking dew; there was always stretched above it the blue intense tent of a heaven full of light,—­always below and around, long level reaches of hot shining sand; the phantoms of waning desert moons have hovered over it, swarthy Arab chiefs have encamped under it; it has threaded the narrow streets of Damascus—­that city the most beautiful—­on the backs of gaunt gray dromedaries; it has crossed the seas,—­and all for you, if you take it, this product of desert freedom, torrid winds, and fervid suns!”

“I might swallow the date,” said Mrs. Purcell, “but Africa would choke me.”

Mr. Raleigh had remained silent for some time, watching Marguerite as she talked.  It seemed to him that his youth was returning; he forgot his resolves, his desires, and became aware of nothing in the world but her voice.  Just before she concluded, she grew conscious of his gaze, and almost at once ceased speaking; her eyes fell a moment to meet it, and then she would have flashed them aside, but that it was impossible; lucid lakes of light, they met his own; she was forced to continue it, to return it, to forget all, as he was forgetting, in that long look.

“What is this?” said Mrs. Purcell, stooping to pick up a trifle on the matting.

“C’est a moi!” cried Marguerite, springing up suddenly, and spilling all the fragments of the feast, to the evident satisfaction of the lately neglected guests.

“Yours?” said Mrs. Purcell with coolness, still retaining it.  “Why do you think in French?”

“Because I choose!” said Marguerite, angrily.  “I mean—­How do you know that I do?”

“Your exclamation, when highly excited or contemptuously indifferent, is always in that tongue.”

“Which am I now?”

“Really, you should know best.  Here is your bawble”; and Mrs. Purcell tossed it lightly into her hands, and went out.

It was a sheath of old morocco.  The motion loosened the clasp, and the contents, an ivory oval and a cushion of faded silk, fell to the floor.  Mr. Raleigh bent and regathered them; there was nothing for Marguerite but to allow that he should do so.  The oval had reversed in falling, so that he did not see it; but, glancing at her before returning it, he found her face and neck dyed deeper than the rose.  Still reversed, he was about to relinquish it, when Mrs. McLean passed, and, hearing the scampering of little feet as they fled with booty, she also entered.

“Seeing you reminds me, Roger,” said she.  “What do you suppose has become of that little miniature I told you of?  I was showing it to Marguerite the other night, and have not seen it since.  I must have mislaid it, and it was particularly valuable, for it was some nameless thing that Mrs. Heath found among her mother’s trinkets, and I begged it of her, it was such a perfect likeness of you.  Can you have seen it?”