Then she glanced curiously round the room.  Long, low, with four tawdry glass and gilt chandeliers hanging from the not over-clean ceiling, cushions spreading all over the floor excepting in the middle where lay an exquisite Persian carpet, long mirrors on all sides, little inlaid tables, and at the far end, built into the wall with steps leading up to it, a bed behind gilt bars, the door in which was fastened by a gilt padlock.

It seemed that their dragoman had brought them to the house so as to add yet more perquisites to his daily remuneration by regaling them with an exhibition of Eastern dancing.

“What kind of dancing?” asked Jill with a slight frown, as the twinkling music suddenly stopped.

“Guess we can’t tell you!” replied the American mother, whose corsets were not in exact accord with the cushions upon which she sat, breathing heavily from her upper whaleboned register.

“Nous esperons le mieux,” said the Frenchman, winking at the dragoman.

And that moment they were enlightened.

The two English women emitted each a little screech, the American mother caught convulsively at her daughter, who coldly raised her long-handled lorgnettes the more fully to survey the picture before her.  The Australian girl sat quiet, as did the Englishman who had been there before; the Italian ejaculated “Per dio,” and the Frenchman “Mon Dieu,” as the widow, pulling one side of her veil across her face, hid her over-crimson mouth, but in no way impeded her view, whilst Jill looked round hastily for a way of escape, but suddenly remembering the certain peril in the street decided, as she edged as far as possible from the marchese, to sit out the difficulties of the moment.

CHAPTER VIII

To natives, a dressed or undressed dancer is nothing more than a plaything, or something to help pass the hour; he will look at and criticise her with much less enthusiasm than he would a she-camel, and remunerate her or her owner according to the measure of pleasure he has found in her posturing.

But it is difficult, wellnigh impossible, to describe the feeling of the occidental women when three orientals of their own sex, without a vestige of clothing, suddenly one after the other, like ducks, sidled into the room.

They were none of them in their first youth, and the dragoman, after watching their movements, decided once and for all to withdraw his patronage from the house, and sat wondering how much he dared try to extract from his patron’s pockets for such an exhibition, while Jill, who felt as though she had been suddenly struck between the eyes, sat hypnotised by the undulating forms before her, until she was overcome by a frantic desire to bury her face in a cushion and to give way to unrestrained hysterical laughter.  This same feeling has been known to overcome one in Church when a hen, side-tracking through the open