ostrich feather in the hands of any street-merchant. For he came.
Anthony came! Not to look meekly up from the pavement below the
railing, but to ascend the steps of the terrace, and advance with grave
dignity toward our table. Within a yard of us he stopped, giving to me,
not to Miss Gilder, the beautiful Arab salute, a touch on forehead and
heart.

"You devil!" I was saying to myself. "So you walk into this trap, do
you, and calmly trust me to get you out. Serve you right if I don't
move hand or foot." And I almost made up my mind that I wouldn't. But I
was interested. I wanted intensely to know what the dickens Anthony was
up to, and whether he would have been up to it if he'd known the sort
of young woman he had to deal with.

"It was I who called to you, not this gentleman," said Monny, when she
found that Green Turban did not look at her. "Do you speak French or
English a little?"

"A little of both. But I choose French when talking to Americans,"
replied Anthony Fenton, with astounding impertinence, in the preferred
language. "I do not know you, Madame. But I do know this gentleman."

Good heavens! What next? He acknowledged me! What was I to do now? What
did the impudent fellow want me to do? Evidently he was trying an
experiment. Anthony is great on experiments, and always has been. But
this was a bomb. I thought he wanted to see if I could catch it on the
fly, and drop it into water before it had time to explode.

"Why didn't you tell us, Lord Ernest?" asked Monny, with a flash in her
gray eyes. "I thought you hadn't been in Egypt since you were a child."