from his full, somewhat protuberant black eyes that her guilty heart
fairly turned over in her.

It made matters no more comforting to have Miriam packed from the
room.

She would deny it all, she thought desperately ... No, she would
admit it, and implore his indulgence.... She would admit nothing but
the garden.... She would admit the ball.... She would _never_ admit
the young man....

With conscious eyes and flushing cheeks, woefully aware of
dew-drenched satin slippers and an upsettingly hammering heart,
Aimée presented the young image of irresolute confusion.

To her surprise there was no outburst. Her father was suddenly gay
and smiling, with a flow of pleasant phrases that invited her
affection. In his good humor--and Tewfick Pasha liked always to be
kept in good humor--he had touches of that boyish charm that had
made him the _enfant gâté_ of Paris and Vienna as well as Cairo and
Constantinople. An _enfant_ no more, in the robustly rotund forties,
his cheerful self-indulgence demanded still of his environment that
smiling acquiescence that kept life soft and comfortable.

And now it suddenly struck Aimée, 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....