in for us to see, a tiny, thin, black-eyed creature, clinging to her grandmother. She is her father’s favourite, they said—she and Saida, the eldest girl, who was with him when he was quartered at Alexandria, and Hassan, a bright-eyed little imp of four years. We had paid a long visit, and got away after many leave-takings and hopes for their wellbeing as well as that of ‘El Bey.’ ‘Inshallah,’ his wife answered rather sadly. ‘They say the Christian Powers want to do something to my husband. I don’t understand it at all. We can’t get on without the Christians, or they without us. Why can’t we all live in peace together?’ In November I had been taken to see Madame Sherif Pasha, a voluble lady, full of importance, and telling us between the puffs of her cigarette how she had had a visit from Arabi’s wife, and had spoken severely to her, and told her to go home and make her husband behave better and keep him from these _bêtises_, and the poor woman had cried and promised to do her best. Now, in February, Madame Sherif had retired to obscurity, and Madame Arabi was wife of the Minister of War. Sherif himself I did not know, but those who knew him found him a pleasant companion, a plausible speaker, and a crack billiard-player. Arabi, terribly in earnest about some important question, calling at his house and finding him engrossed in a game of billiards, would retire in disgust. A clear-sighted foreign Consul said of him: ‘Sherif is full of good intentions, but he has never any intention of carrying them out.’ The most able of our English officials said of him, ‘He is honest in intention, hazy in his ideas, indolent in action; but, as partisanship for his Ministry seems to be one of the chief causes that has led us into war, let us say the best of him now.’ Towards the end of March, before we left Cairo, Arabi came to say good-bye to us. A little worried and troubled by false accusations made against him in English newspapers, he was still confident that some day his character would be cleared. ‘They must know some day that it is the good of the people that we seek.’ A little time before their work was judged, that was all he asked. This has been denied him, and those who thought it well to ‘bring things to a crisis and hasten intervention’ by raising a quarrel between him and the Khedive have done their work. I spoke of my visit to his house, and he said: ‘Our women have not been in the habit of receiving the visits of the ladies of Europe, so if in any way they failed in the courtesy and attention due to a guest, I hope you will understand it was not from want of goodwill, but from want of knowledge.’ I showed him a picture of my little boy; he raised it to his lips and kissed it, hoping he would some day come to Egypt to be the friend of his children. Perhaps I have not been a fair judge in his cause since then.