And now it suddenly struck Aimee, through her tense alarm, that his smile was not a spontaneous smile, but was silently, uneasily asking his daughter not to make something too unpleasant for him ... that something that had brought him here, at an unprecedented midnight ... that had kept him waiting until she, supposedly, should rise and dress....

If it were not then a knowledge of her escapade—?

The relief from that fear made everything else bearable.  She was even able to entertain, with a certain welcome, the alternative alarm that he had decided to marry again—­that nightmare from whose realization the unknown gods (or more truly, the unknown goddesses of the Cairene demi-monde!) had assisted to save her.

There was a furtive excitement about him that fanned the supposition.

Then, quite suddenly, the illuminating lightning cut the clouds.

“My dear child, I have news, really important news for you.  If I have not been discussing your future,” said Tewfick Pasha, staring with stern nonchalance ahead and determinedly unaware of her instant stiffening of attention, “I have by no means been neglectful of it....  To-day—­indeed to-night—­there has been a consummation of my plans....  It is not to every daughter that a father may hurry with such an announcement.”

Her first feeling was a merciful relief.  He knew nothing then of the ball!  She could breathe again....  It was her marriage that had brought him.

No new danger, that, but the eternal menace that she had always to dread....  But how many times had he promised that she should have no unknown husband, imposed by tradition!  How many times had she indulged dreams of Europe, of bright, free romance!

And now he was off on some tangent from which it would need all her coaxing wit to divert him.  With wide eyes painfully intent, her little, jeweled fingers very still in their locked grip in her lap, the color draining from her cheeks, she sat waiting for the revelation.

What was it all?  Had he really decided upon something?  Upon some one?

Tewfick Pasha appeared in no hurry to inform her.  He wandered rather confusedly into a rambling speech about her age and her position and the responsibilities of life and his inabilities to prevent their reaching her, and about his very tender affection for her and his understanding of all those girlish reticences and reluctances which made innocent youth so exquisite, while silently his daughter hung her head and wondered what he would be saying if he knew that she had broken every canon of seclusion and convention, had talked and danced with a man....

His astonishment would be so horrific that she flinched even from the thought.

And if he knew, moreover, that this man had caught her and kissed her—!

She told herself that she was disgraced for life.  She had a dreamy desire to close her eyes and lean back and dream on about that disgrace....