“What do you mean?” she asked, for though she caught the allusion to Disraeli’s rose-colored romance, the application puzzled her.

“I see you have not heard of our gypsy plan,” he answered, and at once proceeded to detail it.

She was not so much delighted as he expected, but a pretty, lucid gleam came into her eyes at the mention of Claremont.

“I shall be glad to see your home,” she said quietly.  “I have heard so much of its beauty and its antiquity.”

“It is pretty, and it is old,” said he, “but it will not be mine much longer.  I am negotiating its sale now.”

She started:  “What! you were in earnest, then?  You are really going to Egypt?”

“Yes, I am going to Egypt.  Why should I stay?  What has life to offer me here save vegetation?  There, at least, I can find action.”

She looked at him with a strange, wistful expression which struck and startled him.  He felt as if a prisoned soul suddenly sprang up and gazed at him out of the clear blue depths of her eyes.  “Oh what a good thing it is to be a man!” she said.  “How free you are! how able to do what you please and go where you please—­to seek action and to find it!  Oh, Major Clare, you ought to thank God night and day that He did not make you a woman!”

“I am glad, certainly, that I am a man,” said Victor honestly.  “But you are the last woman in the world from whom I should have expected to hear such rebellious sentiments.”

“I am not rebellious,” said Eleanor more quietly.  “What is the good of it?  All the rebellion in the world could not make me a man; and I have no fancy to be an unsexed woman.  But nobody was ever more weary of conventional routine, nobody ever longed more for freedom and action than I do.”

It was on the end of Victor’s tongue to say, “Then come with me to Egypt,” but he caught himself in time.  Was he mad to imagine that “the beautiful Miss Milbourne”—­a woman at whose feet the most desirable matches of “society” had been laid—­would end her brilliant career by marrying a soldier of fortune, and expatriating herself from her country and her kindred?  He gave a grim sort of smile which Eleanor did not quite understand, as he said:  “Where is your lotos?  It ought to make you more content with the things that be.”

“I have it,” Eleanor said with child-like simplicity.  “Mr. Brent remembered and brought it to me.  I have not forgotten my promise to share it with you.”

“Take it to the mountain to-morrow night, then,” said he quickly.  “Let us eat it together there.  I should like to link you even with my farewell to the past.”

And, since an interruption came just then, they parted with this understanding.

The next day Major Clare was standing on the terrace of Claremont—­a stately, solidly-built old house, bearing itself with an air of conscious pride and disdain of modern frippery, despite certain significant signs of decay—­when his guests arrived in formidable procession.  There was something of the “old school” in his manner of welcoming them—­a grace and courtesy which struck more than one of them as at once very perfect and very charming.