kith and kin. Seized by the most irresistible curiosity of his life,
moved by desire for knowledge, that a certain plan in his mind might be
successfully advanced he went south and east, not west and north.

For four months Egypt knew him not. For four months the Khedive was
never told the truth save by European financiers, when truths were
obvious facts; for four long months never saw a fearless or an honest eye
in his own household. Not that it mattered in one sense; but Ismail was
a man of ideas, a sportsman of a sort, an Iniquity with points; a man who
chose the broad way because it was easier, not because he was
remorseless. At the start he meant well by his people, but he meant
better by himself; and not being able to satisfy both sides of the
equation, he satisfied one at the expense of the other and of that x
quantity otherwise known as Europe. Now Europe was heckling him; the
settling of accounts was near. Commissioners had been sent to find where
were the ninety millions he had borrowed. Only Ismail and Sadik the
Mouffetish, once slave and foster-brother, could reply. The Khedive
could not long stave off the evil day when he must "pay the debt of the
lobster," and Sadik give account of his stewardship. Meanwhile, his mind
turned to the resourceful little Englishman with the face of a girl and
the tongue of an honest man.

But the day Dicky had set for his return had come and gone, and Dicky
himself had not appeared. With a grim sort of satisfaction, harmonious
with his irritation, Ismail went forth with his retinue to the Dosah, the
gruesome celebration of the Prophet's birthday, following on the return
of the pilgrimage from Mecca. At noon he entered his splendid tent at
one side of a square made of splendid tents, and looked out listlessly,
yet sourly, upon the vast crowds assembled--upon the lines of banners,
the red and green pennons embroidered with phrases from the Koran. His