She broke off with a laugh, and Daniel smiled affably. Somehow, in spite of his Herculean proportions, he was not a man one would associate with violence.
After luncheon, Daniel spent some time in talking to Lord Blair in regard to native affairs; and it was already half past three when he left the Great Man’s study, and walked across the hall to the main entrance. Here he encountered Lady Muriel, who was just going off upon her visit to the bazaars. She was about to step into a very new and luxurious automobile, which Mrs. de Courcy Cavilland, wife of the Colonel of the Dragoons, had recently purchased to the honour of the regiment and to the dismay of her husband. This lady, a small fluffy woman, with innocent blue eyes and sharp little teeth, was making gushing remarks to Muriel as Daniel appeared at the head of the steps; and three young Dragoon officers were standing behind her, like nice little dogs awaiting their turn to go through their tricks. Actually they were excellent fellows, but in the presence of their colonel’s wife, they bore little resemblance to the fire-eating cavalrymen of tradition; and Daniel, as he looked down upon them from the top of the steps, wondered which was the more disastrous influence in a regiment—that of the colonel’s wife upon the younger officers, or that of the younger officers upon the colonel’s wife.
He felt a sort of gloomy interest in the group before him; and, as his presence seemed to be unnoticed, he leaned against the jamb of the door, hat in hand, watching the scene through a recurrent haze of tobacco-smoke.
“I suggest,” Mrs. Cavilland was saying to Muriel whose back was turned to him, “that we drive up the Mousky, and go first to the scent bazaar. Willie Purdett, here, wants to buy some scent for his mother—Lady Mary, you know. And then I must go to the brass bazaar: I promised dear Lady Agatha Lawer I’d get her one of those tea-tray things. She so hates going to the bazaars herself: she says they’re so smelly. Personally, I simply love the East....”
Muriel took her seat in the car, and as she did so she caught sight of Daniel.
“Hullo!” she exclaimed, “I thought you’d gone.”
He took his pipe out of his mouth, and told her he was just going.
Muriel introduced him to Mrs. Cavilland, who stared at him with disdain, casting a withering glance upon the disreputable hat he was holding in one hand, and upon the pipe in the other. She then turned away as though the sight were unbearable.
“Mr. Lane is a cousin of your friend Charles Barthampton,” Muriel told her; and thereat her manner changed with surprising suddenness, for the British peerage was as meat and drink to her.
“Why, of course,” she answered, “I can see the likeness now;” and she glanced with surprise at the mischievous smile—almost a wink—which Muriel directed at him. “You’re new to Cairo?” she added. ”You must come and see me: I’m always at home on Tuesdays.“