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 straightway upon this errand. He returned within three minutes and reported a favourable response. "She will be very glad."

"She will? When?"

"At any time to-day. Now, if you wish."

"Thank you. Then now, if you think"

"I will show you," Hyacinthe said.

He led the way into the hotel and to the second floor, where he knocked upon a door and then, without waiting for a response, opened it, and stood aside while Ogle entered.

Hyacinthe did not follow him. "My mother will come very soon, I am sure," he said, and, having closed the door, went away.

The room was a small salon furnished in the Moorish manner of the public apartments downstairs—that is to say, it was Moorish after a Gallic interpretation, and reminded Ogle of "oriental rooms" he remembered seeing in a few American houses in his childhood. Here, however, where veritable Moors walked the streets, it seemed less out of place; though after what he had seen of the Arab quarter it did not have the air of being truly Moorish; for it was clean and comfortable and odourless.

Before him, as he stood, there was a doorway with