"Whatever we have is yours--we shall do very well. Everyone is pleased with you. Your professors prophesy great things for you. Keller, you dumb dog, tell her we shall manage very well, and that she shall never know the difference!" "If she decides to disobey her father," said Keller Bey, "we must do as things will do with us. But I wash my hands of the responsibility." For the first time I saw the flash in Linn's eyes. "Wash your hands of the responsibility, will you, Keller? So did Pilate. But I cannot hear that much good came of that! You and I must stand between, and prevent a Calvary for our Alida--or a Golgotha, for she will never marry that man alive!--I know her--I brought her up, and I never mastered her once. No more shall her father by one letter brought by a brown thick-lipped prince in a frock coat and glossy hat!" "Let us say no more about it," murmured Alida. "I will send away the slave's son to-morrow. I shall write to my father also. Doubtless he will be angry, but then--surely it is true that he and those about him are imagining a vain thing. He should have kept me veiled and cloistered, without a book, without music, without a mind. Then I might have been fit for the plaything of an idle man, but that time is past. I am a woman of the Occident, fitted to carry out my life alone, to earn my living, and to be the mate of some man who shall be altogether mine!" CHAPTER XVIII THE PRINCESS COMMANDS We slept late the next morning, Hugh and I. Indeed, Hugh always slept late unless he had the luck to be awakened. We did not breakfast till Linn had returned from her watch-dog march along with Alida to the house of the Sous-Prefet. There was now no regular drill, and instead of roll-call it was regarded sufficient if we reported to the guard which remained in permanence playing at cards and "bouchon" under the central bastion of the fort. This Hugh and I did, remaining a little while to gossip with Victor Dor and others of our company who were lounging about the barrack square. I fear that during those weeks we passed for rather sulky dogs who would not share our bone with our neighbours. For, having little to do, the young fellows of the first Milanese often followed with admiring eyes the daily progress of Alida and Linn in the direction of the Sous-Prefecture. We had requests for introductions even from the younger officers, but all such we referred to Keller Bey, knowing that the old man would be able to deal with any intrusion. And indeed matters stopped there till the regiment was disbanded, and the Italians were sent home at the expense of the French Republic. Meantime we continued, as Saunders McKie would have said, "living at hack and manger," free of the privileges of the house of Keller Bey and Linn his wife.