"Oh yes, to be sure!" Then again lapsing into reminiscence, "What odd words we used to choose sometimes--words that nobody could guess! I wonder what words they have chosen?" He thinks of saying jocosely, "Shall I go and ask them?" but refrains, because he fears it would put it into her head to send him away. A sort of piercing squeal makes itself heard from the _salon_. "Do you think that that can be meant for a _pig_?" asks Elizabeth, her line ears pricked in unaffected interest. "Oh!"--with a return of uneasiness--"I wish that they would not make so much noise; father does so dislike noise. They might as well have put it off till to-morrow." "Why would to-morrow's noise be more endurable than to-night's?" "It would not have mattered to-morrow; father will not be here; he is going to Hammam Rhira." Burgoyne's jaw drops. Is this the alternative course decided upon by Mrs. Le Marchant? Having failed to dislodge him from Algiers, is she going to remove herself and her daughter out of his reach? "Do you mean--are you _all_ going to Hammam Rhira to-morrow?--_all_ going away?" Is it some effect of light from the rose-shaded lamp that makes it seem to him as if a tiny smile, and a yet smaller blush, swept over Elizabeth's face at the aghastness of his tone--an aghastness much more marked than he had intended it should be. "Not to-morrow; not all of us. Father and mammy are going there for a couple of nights to see what the place is like--one hears such contradictory accounts; and if they are pleased with it--" "Yes?" "If they are pleased with it we shall all probably move on there in a day or two." He would like to be sure that this sentence ends with a sigh, but a prodigious storm of hand-clapping from the extempore theatre prevents his hearing whether it has that regretful finish. "And they are going to leave you behind?" "Why not? there would not be much use in taking me; and, as I tell you, they love being _tête-à-tête_." "And you love being alone?" The moment that the question is out of his mouth, he realizes its full unkindness. He is perfectly aware that she does _not_ like being alone; that she is naturally a most sociable little being; that, even now, these frightened five minutes of unsatisfactory broken talk with himself have made her look less chilled, less wobegone, less white. Her answer, if it can be looked upon as one, must be taken by him as a rebuke. It is only that she says nervously: "One certainly does hear dreadfully plainly here with the door open." Her tone is of the gentlest, her look no angrier than a dove's, and yet he would be obtuser than he is if he did not at once comprehend that her remark implies a wish that he should presently shut that door behind him on the outside. He complies. With that newly-gained knowledge as to to-morrow's Hammam Rhira, he can afford to comply.