“Yes, let him,” supplemented young Burnham-Seaforth, speaking with his eyes on Senorita Rosario, who seemed nervous and ill-pleased by the news of the expected arrival.  “He won’t have to be entertained by us if he only comes to see the pater; and we can easily crowd him aside if he tries to thrust himself upon us—­a fellow with a name like ’Rupert St. Aubyn’ is bound to be a silly ass.”  And when, in the late afternoon, “Lieutenant Rupert St. Aubyn,” in the person of Cleek, arrived with his snubnosed manservant, a kit-bag, several rugs and a bundle of golf sticks, young Burnham-Seaforth saw no reason to alter that assertion.  For, a “silly ass”—­albeit an unusually handsome one with his fair, curling hair and his big blonde moustache—­he certainly was; a lisping “ha-ha-ing” “don’t-cher-knowing” silly ass, whom the presence of ladies seemed to cover with confusion and drive into a very panic of shy embarrassment.

“Dios! but he is handsome, this big, fair lieutenant!” whispered the Spaniard to young Burnham-Seaforth.  “A great, handsome fool—­all beauty and no brains, like a doll of wax!” Then she bent over and murmured smilingly to Zuilika:  “I shall make a bigger nincompoop of this big, fair sap-head than Heaven already has done before he leaves here, just for the sake of seeing him stammer and blush!”

Only the sad expression of Zuilika’s eyes told that she so much as heard, as she rose to greet the visitor.  Garbed from head to foot in the deep violet-coloured stuff which is the mourning of Turkish women, her little pointed slippers showing beneath the hem of her frock, and only her dark, mournful eyes visible between the top of the shrouding yashmak and the edge of her sequined snood, she made a pathetic picture as she stood there waiting to greet the unknown visitor.

“Sir, you are welcome—­you are most welcome,” she said in a voice whose modulations were not lost upon Cleek’s ears as he put forth his hand and received the tips of her little, henna-stained fingers upon his palm.  “Peace be with you, who are of his people—­he that I loved and mourn!” Then, as if overcome with grief at the recollection of her widowhood, she plucked away her hand, covered her eyes, and moved staggeringly out of the room.  And Cleek saw no more of her that day; but he knew when she performed her orisons before the mummy case—­as she did each morning and evening—­by the strong, pungent odour of incense drifting through the house and filling it with a sickly scent.

Her absence seemed to make but little impression upon him, however; for, following up a well-defined plan of action, he devoted himself wholly to the Spanish woman, and both amazed her and gratified her vanity by allowing her to learn that a man may be the silliest ass imaginable and yet quite understand how to flirt and to make love to a woman.  And so it fell out that instead of “Lieutenant Rupert St. Aubyn” being elbowed out by young Burnham-Seaforth, it was “Lieutenant St. Aubyn” who elbowed him out; and without being in the least aware of it, the flattered Anita, like an adroitly hooked trout, was being “played” in and out and round about the eddies and the deeps until the angler had her quite ready for the final dip of the net at the landing point.