Damaris adjusted the selva, the quaint silver kind of tube between the eyebrows which connects the yashmak and the tarhah or head-veil, took a final look in the mirror, and rose.

“I am an Egyptian woman of the humblest class.”

She was all in black, as befits a member of that class.  The simple bodice, cut in a yoke, of the black muslin dress fitted her like a glove; the skirt fell in wide folds from the waist and swung about her ankles encircled by big brass rings, which clashed as she moved.  She wore the black yashmak and tarhah; upon her arms were many brass bracelets which tinkled; on one hand she wore a ring and there were flesh-coloured silken hose and sandals upon her feet.  She had made a mistake and henna’d her finger-tips, which members of the humblest class have not time to do—­besides, their patient hands matter so little—­and her great eyes looked as black as the yashmak over which they shone.

Her beautiful face was hidden, yet was she infinitely alluring, tantilising, mysterious, under her veils.

Heavens! if only women knew how easy it is to enhance the looks by the simple method of touching up the eyes with kohl and covering the rest of the face!

“All of us in veils and masks will have to take them off at one.”

“Yes, there’ll be the rub,” said Damaris, as she knelt down beside the perplexed, growling bulldog.

“Don’t know Missie?  Don’t love her?”

“Woomph!” replied Wellington, hurling his great weight into her lap.

“How he loves you, Maris!”

“Yes, miss, he does,” broke in Jane Coop.  “And I firmly believe he’s my mistress’s guardian angel.”

“After you, Janie dear,” said the girl, smiling fondly up at the plump maid and tying a huge crimson bow round the neck of the long-suffering animal.

“What is he going as, Maris?”

“A gargle, miss,” broke in the maid.  “I think it’s just fun on the part of Miss Damaris, because nothing as solid as him,”—­pointing of comb to shamed dog—­“could go as anything watery.”

Damaris got to her feet.

“Let’s go in to Marraine,” she choked.  “Gargoyle, my dear,” she whispered, “is what she meant—­gargoyle.  Do come along!”

The girls’ happy laughter rang down the corridor as they knocked at her grace’s door.

She stood at her dressing-table in a beautiful dress of grey brocade.  Diamonds sparkled in the laces of her corsage, on her fingers and in the buckles of her lovely shoes; a big bunch of pink carnations was tied on the top of her ebony stick; a priceless lace veil fastened over her head by a fragile wreath of diamond leaves fell almost to the hem of her dress behind.  She had discarded the terrifying perruque, and her own hair, snowy-white, was puffed and curled about the little face, which was finely powdered and slightly rouged.  She was a dream of beautiful old age, with Dekko just visible under a huge pink bow upon her shoulder.