But Captain Owen Kettle-was not a man who could be kept in awe for long.  He took off his helmet, marched briskly up toward the divan, and bowed.

“Good afternoon, your Ladyship,” he said.  “I trust I see you well.  I’m Captain Kettle, master of that steamboat now lying in your roads, and this is Mr. Wenlock, a passenger of mine, who heard that you were English, and has come to put you in the way of some property at home.”

The lady sat more upright, and set back her great shoulders.  “I am English,” she said.  “I was called in the Giaour faith Teresa Anderson.”

“That’s the name,” said Kettle.  “Mr. Wenlock’s come to take you away to step into a nice thing at home.”

“I am Emir here.  Am I asked to be Emir in your country?”

“Why, no,” said Kettle; “that job’s filled already, and we aren’t thinking of making a change.  Our present Emir in England (who, by the way, is a lady like yourself) seems to suit us very well.  No, you’ll be an ordinary small-potato citizen, like everybody else, and you will probably find it a bit of a change.”

“I do not onderstand,” said the woman.  “I have not spoke your language since I was child.  Speak what you say again.”

“I’ll leave it to Mr. Wenlock, your Majesty, if you’ve no objections, as he’s the party mostly interested; and if you’d ask one of your young men to bring me a long drink and a chair, I’ll be obliged.  It’s been a hot walk up here.  I see you don’t mind smoke,” he added, and lit a cheroot.

Now, it was clear from the attitude of the guards and the civilians present, that Kettle was jostling heavily upon court etiquette, and at first the Lady Emir was very clearly inclined to resent it, and had sharp orders for repression ready upon her lips.  But she changed her mind, perhaps through some memory that by blood she was related to this nonchalant race; and presently cushions were brought, on which Captain Kettle bestowed himself tailor-fashion (with his back cautiously up against a wall), and then a negro slave knelt before him and offered sweet sticky sherbet, which he drank with a wry face.

But in the mean while Mr. Wenlock was stating his case with small forensic eloquence.  The sight of Miss Teresa Anderson in the flesh awed him.  He had pictured to himself some slim, quiet exile, perhaps a little gauche and timid, but at any rate amenable to instruction and to his will.  He had forgotten the developing power of tropical suns.  The woman before him, whose actual age was twenty-nine, looked fifty, and even for a desperate man like himself was impossible as a wife in England.

He felt daunted before her already.  It flashed through his mind that it was she who had ordered those grisly heads to be stuck above the water-gate, and he heartily wished himself away back on the steamer, tramping for cargo.  He was not wanting in pluck as a usual thing, this unsuccessful solicitor, but before a woman like this, with such a record behind her, a man may well be scared and yet not be accused of cowardice.