In her usual place, aloof from the rest of the company, Elizabeth is sitting in a clinging white gown of some woolly stuff. With a dainty white kerchief twisted about her head, and a bundle of many-tinted Eastern stuffs on her knees, she looks like a little Romney. Now and again, as fragments of the widow's siren strains reach her ears, he sees her lips curl up into delighted laughter; but, for the most part, she seems to be looking round rather uneasily, as if seeking something or someone. Can it be himself that she, in her innocence of being observed, is on the watch for? He has no right to be playing the spy on her in any case. It is clear that, dressed as she is, she cannot be meditating going out. He must not frighten her by any too direct or sudden attentions. In a little while the other occupants of the terrace will drift away, and he will stroll out and join her, and together they will watch the shade of the ficus-tree, lengthening over the red flags. But she presently baffles his calculations by rising, and, with her rainbow-tinted pile of brocades clasped in her slender arms, slowly passes into the house. Has she retreated thither for good? and will he have to frame some new flimsy excuse for knocking at her door? But again he is out of his reckoning, for in about a quarter of an hour she re-issues, dressed for walking; and after one more lingering and, as it seems to him, disappointed glance around her, paces, a solitary little figure, down the hill. He lays his watch before him, and, having counted five minutes on its dial-plate, sets off in pursuit. He overtakes her just as she reaches the point where the lane debouches into the highroad. She stands, looking rather disconsolately, first up the hill, then down it, evidently uncertain which direction to choose. "You cannot make up your mind?" he says, pausing beside her, and taking off his hat. She gives a slight start, and a friendly, pleased smile runs all over her face and up into her eyes--a smile that makes him say to himself confidently that it _was_ he whom her glance had been seeking on the terrace. "Which do you advise?" "I advise the town." He has long known her teachableness, so it is no great surprise to him that she at once turns in the direction counselled. "As I am going there myself, will you allow me to walk a little way with you?" He makes the request with respectful diffidence; and she, after one small troubled look, evidently given to the memory of her father, assents. They set off down the hill together, the air, sharp after the rain--as sharp, at least, as Algiers' stingless air ever is--bringing the colour to Elizabeth's cheeks, as she steps along light-heartedly, scarcely refraining from breaking into a run, down the steep incline. Her spirits are so evidently rising at every yard that he hazards his next step. "I am going to see the Arab town; Miss Strutt says that I ought."