“Very well, Bey; if you are going to behave so foolishly, and talk so childishly of what you know nothing about, I am not going to tell you anything more. You may find things out for yourself, if you like.” And Cecil walked away to her own room, and returned with Charlie’s ring shining on her finger, a perpetual defiance and reminder to Azim Bey. CHAPTER XVII. AN IDYLL, AND ITS ENDING. After all, the tender care Cecil had shown for her pupil’s feelings, almost disregarding Charlie’s in comparison with them, was not only without result, but quite unnecessary. Azim Bey had read in her face as she said good-night what had happened, and neither silence nor denials on her part would have had the slightest effect in shaking his belief in his discovery. Consequently her vain attempts to mollify him were regarded with contempt as signs of conscious guilt, and the rupture which concluded them only increased his wrath against Charlie, over whom he had now been forced to quarrel with mademoiselle. He was obliged to do his lessons as usual, but at other times he sat apart and meditated vengeance. His mind was full of schemes--indeed the only drawback was their number and variety. He intended fully to get rid of Charlie, and to punish Cecil for engaging herself to him; but as soon as he had settled upon a means of doing this, a new and splendid idea was sure to come into his head, and he would devote himself to working it out until it in its turn was supplanted by a better. There was another difficulty common to all these plans. It seemed absolutely impossible to carry them out, situated as he was, under Cecil’s charge and Masûd’s guardianship. Even when he had patched up a hollow peace with Cecil, cemented by a mutual understanding that the subject of her engagement was not to be mentioned between them, this difficulty confronted him still, and it was therefore with a joy born of hope and confidence that he found M. Karalampi one day in the Pasha’s anteroom. Here was the man who could do what he wanted, and M. Karalampi was astonished to find himself seized upon and dragged into a corner, and adjured in excited whispers to get rid of that wretch, that criminal of an English doctor who had dared to engage himself to Mdlle. Antaza.