smiling. "But, think you, I could marry while my life is so tied to him
and to our Egyptian?"

No one looking at her limpid, shining blue eyes but would have set her
down for twenty-three or twenty-four, for not a line showed on her smooth
face; she was exquisite of limb and feature, and had the lissomeness of a
girl of fifteen. There was in her eyes, however, an unquiet sadness; she
had abstracted moments when her mind seemed fixed on some vexing problem.
Such a mood suddenly came upon her now. The pen lay by the paper
untouched, her hands folded in her lap, and a long silence fell upon
them, broken only by the twanging of the strips of cane in Soolsby's
hands. At last, however, even this sound ceased; and the two scarce
moved as the sun drew towards the middle afternoon. At last they were
roused by the sound of a horn, and, looking down, they saw a four-in-hand
drawing smartly down the road to the village over the gorse-spread
common, till it stopped at the Cloistered House. As Faith looked, her
face slightly flushed. She bent forward till she saw one figure get down
and, waving a hand to the party on the coach as it moved on, disappear
into the gateway of the Cloistered House.

"What is the office they have given him?" asked Soolsby, disapproval in
his tone, his eyes fixed on the disappearing figure.

"They have made Lord Eglington Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs," she
answered.

"And what means that to a common mind?"

"That what his Government does in Egypt will mean good or bad to our
Egyptian," she returned.