“My dear boy!” said Lady Haigh, and kissed him, impulsively. “If only Cecil knew you as you really are!” But Cecil did not know, and yet she cried herself to sleep when she went back to the Palace that night. It could not have been on account of Charlie’s absence, for she had satisfied herself that she did not love him, and it could scarcely have been because he had missed his snubbing, and therefore it must have been, as she said to herself the next morning, that she was tired and excited from seeing so many old friends again. CHAPTER XIV. A SPOKE IN HIS WHEEL. Neither Cecil nor Azim Bey ever referred in words to the approaching termination of the former’s engagement. Cecil had never in the slightest degree hesitated in her resolution to bind herself to remain at Baghdad for the further period of three years. The letters from Whitcliffe had of late been so uniformly cheerful in tone with respect to Fitz and Terry, for the expenses of whose education she had now for two years been wholly responsible, that she could not but conquer her longing to see the dear home faces once more, and decide to remain a member of his Excellency’s household. Then, too, her little pupil had endeared himself to her, jealous and exacting though he often was, and she could not bear to think of leaving him. Thus her mind was made up, and she had no anticipation of anything that might interfere to prevent the signing of the agreement. As for Azim Bey, his silence did not arise from lack of interest in the matter. He knew as well as Charlie did when the first agreement lapsed, and throughout the tour from which they had just returned his mind had been busy on the subject. Over and over again, when he seemed merely to be contemplating the beauties of nature, or listening attentively to the morals which Cecil did her best to deduce for him from the various scenes and incidents of their daily life, he was occupied in planning schemes by which his governess’s further stay might be ensured. It was clear to him that the cardinal point was that Charlie should be absent from Baghdad when the agreement was signed. Azim Bey’s dislike for the surgeon of the Consulate was not a feeling of gradual growth, but had sprung up, fully matured, on the occasion of Charlie’s unauthorised intrusion into the harem. With a good deal of natural shrewdness, and a great deal of precocity, stimulated by the unchildlike life he had led, and the books in which he had delighted, the boy had divined Charlie’s secret, and marked him at once as an enemy. By catechising Cecil after all her visits to the Residency, he arrived at the knowledge that she always saw Dr Egerton there; and he remarked that she generally spoke of him with a sigh, but what this sigh meant he could not decide. In any case, he was fully persuaded that it would be far better for mademoiselle to remain with him for the next three years than to marry Dr Egerton. She was