gained admission, was Aimée.

The Soudanese mounted the stairs before them and held open a door
into a long drawing-room from which the pasha's modernity had
stripped every charm except the color of some worn old rugs; the
windows were draped in European style, the walls exhibited paper
instead of paneling; in one corner was a Victrola and in another,
beside a lounge chair, stood a table littered with cigarette trays
and French novels with explicit titles.

The only Egyptian touch to the place was four enormous oil portraits
of pompous turbaned gentlemen, in one of whom Ryder recognized the
familiar rotundity of Mahomet Ali in his grand robes.

As a pasha's palace it was a blow, and Ryder's vague, romantic
notions of high halls and gilded arches, suffered a collapse.

Tewfick Pasha came in with haste. He had been going out when these
callers were announced and he was dressed for parade, in a very
light, very tight suit, gardenia in his button-hole, cane in his
gloved hands, fez upon his head. For all their smiling welcome, his
full, dark eyes were uneasy.

He had grown distrustful of surprises.

It was McLean's affair to reassure him. Far from fulminating any
accusations the canny Scot announced himself as the bearer of glad
tidings. A fortune, he announced, was coming to the pasha--or to the
pasha's family. A very rich old woman in France had decided to
change her will.