It was several weary marches to the nearest mission; but they only waited at the farm a few days for rest and preparation for the great event before setting out upon the journey, and after the marriage ceremony had been performed they kept on to the coast to take passage for England. Those days were the most wonderful of Meriem’s life. She had not dreamed even vaguely of the marvels that civilization held in store for her. The great ocean and the commodious steamship filled her with awe. The noise, and bustle and confusion of the English railway station frightened her.
“If there was a good-sized tree at hand,” she confided to Korak, “I know that I should run to the very top of it in terror of my life.”
“And make faces and throw twigs at the engine?” he laughed back.
“Poor old Numa,” sighed the girl. “What will he do without us?”
“Oh, there are others to tease him, my little Mangani,” assured Korak.
The Greystoke town house quite took Meriem’s breath away; but when strangers were about none might guess that she had not been to the manner born.
They had been home but a week when Lord Greystoke received a message from his friend of many years, D’Arnot.
It was in the form of a letter of introduction brought by one General Armand Jacot. Lord Greystoke recalled the name, as who familiar with modern French history would not, for Jacot was in reality the Prince de Cadrenet—that intense republican who refused to use, even by courtesy, a title that had belonged to his family for four hundred years.
“There is no place for princes in a republic,” he was wont to say.
Lord Greystoke received the hawk-nosed, gray mustached soldier in his library, and after a dozen words the two men had formed a mutual esteem that was to endure through life.