The Palace of Darkened Windows | Page 2

unconscious of the flagrantly bewitching effect. Altogether she was as
upsettingly pretty a young person as could be seen in a year's journey,
and the glances of the beholders brightened vividly at her approach.
There was one conspicuous exception. This exception was sitting alone
at the large table which backed Billy's tiny table into a corner by the
railing, and as the girl arrived at that large table the exception arose and
greeted her with an air of glacial chill.
"Oh! Am I so terribly late?" said the girl with great pleasantness, and
arched brows of surprise at the two other places at the table before
which used tea things were standing.
"My sister and Lady Claire had an appointment, so they were obliged
to have their tea and leave," stated the young man, with an air of
politely endeavoring to conceal his feelings, and failing conspicuously
in the endeavor. "They were most sorry."

"Oh, so am I!" declared the girl, in clear and contrite tones which
carried perfectly to Billy B. Hill's enchanted ears. "I never dreamed
they would have to hurry away."
"They did not hurry, as you call it," and the young man glanced at his
watch, "for nearly an hour. It was a disappointment to them."
"Pin-pate!" thought Billy, with intense disgust. "Is he kicking at a
two-some?"
"And have you had your tea, too?" inquired the girl, with an air of
tantalizing unconcern.
"I waited, naturally, for my guest."
"Oh, not naturally!" she laughed. "It must be very unnatural for you to
wait for anything. And you must be starving. So am I--do you think
there are enough cakes left for the two of us?"
Without directly replying, the young man gave the order to the
red-fezzed Arab in a red-girdled white robe who was removing the
soiled tea things, and he assisted the girl into a chair and sat down
facing her. Their profiles were given to the shameless Billy, and he
continued his rapt observations.
He had immediately recognized the girl as a vision he had seen
fluttering around the hotel with an incongruously dismal couple of
unyouthful ladies, and he had mentally affixed a
magnate's-only-daughter-globe-trotting-with-elderly-friends label to
her.
The young man he could not place so definitely. There were a good
many tall, aristocratic young Englishmen about, with slight stoops and
incipient moustaches. This particular Englishman had hair that was
pronouncedly sandy, and Billy suddenly recollected that in lunching at
the Savoy the other day he had noticed that young Englishman in
company with a sandy-haired lady, not so young, and a decidedly
pretty dark-haired girl--it was the girl, of course, who had fixed the

group in Billy's crowded impressions. He decided that these ladies were
the sister and Lady Claire--and Lady Claire, he judiciously concluded,
certainly had nothing on young America.
Young America was speaking. "Don't look so thunderous!" she
complained to her irate host. "How do you know I didn't plan to be late
so as to have you all to myself?"
This was too derisive for endurance. A dull red burned through the tan
on the young Englishman's cheeks and crept up to meet the
corresponding warmth of his hair. A leash within him snapped.
"It is simply inconceivable!" burst from him, and then he shut his jaw
hard, as if only one last remnant of will power kept a seething volcano,
from explosion.
"What is?"
"How any girl--in Cairo, of all places!" he continued to explode in little
snorts.
"You are speaking of--?" she suggested.
"Of your walking with that fellow--in broad daylight!"
"Would it have been better in the gloaming?"
The sweet restraint in the young thing's manner was supernatural. It
was uncanny. It should have warned the red-headed young man, but
oblivious of danger signals, he was plunging on, full steam ahead.
"It isn't as if you didn't know--hadn't been warned."
"You have been so kind," the girl murmured, and poured a cup of tea
the Arab had placed at her elbow.
The young man ignored his. The color burned hotter and hotter in his
face. Even his hair looked redder.

"The look he gave up here was simply outrageous--a grin of insolent
triumph. I'd like to have laid my cane across him!"
The girl's cup clicked against the saucer. "You are horrid!" she declared.
"When we were on shipboard Captain Kerissen was very popular
among the passengers and I talked with him whenever I cared to.
Everyone did. Now that I am in his native city I see no reason to stalk
past him when we happen to be going in the same direction. He is a
gentleman of rank, a relative of the Khedive who is ruling this
country--under your English advice--and he is----"
"A Turk!" gritted out the young man.
"A Turk and proud of it!