to discharge the boatmen with all possible caution. Every thing had been prepared; the table was covered with the richest sweetmeats, the rarest perfumes, the most aromatic coffee. Cecil's impatience was now at its height.
"Gulnare!"—but she replied not:—"dear Gulnare!"
Suddenly he recollected that she might perhaps not understand Arabic—at all events, his Arabic. Still, till his interpreter returned, it would be but civil to help her off with the large blue veil, or mantle, which entirely covered her. Politely proffering his assistance, he removed her veil, and flung it on a chair near.
The scream which followed this act astonished him far less than the discovery to which it led. The lovely Georgian was so fat, that it was with the greatest difficulty she could stand; and an exquisitely tattooed wreath of hyacinths, of a fine blue, began at her chin, meandered over her cheeks, and covered her forehead.
"Oh!" ejaculated Cecil, "if I had but profited by my reading! Why did I not sooner remember the traveller I studied in the days of my youth, who said that in the East a beauty was a load for a camel!"
At this moment Mustapha re-entered the saloon.
"O Allah, how beautiful! By the head of the Prophet, she is a rose—a full moon!"
Cecil sprang forward, with the true Englishman’s
