“It is commanded thee to put on these clothes, O my mistress,” she said in Arabic, dumping down the bundle before Cecil, and retiring forthwith. Much mystified, Cecil helped Um Yusuf to undo the bundle, and drew out of it one of the long loose gowns with square-cut neck and wide hanging sleeves, worn by Turkish ladies of the old school. It was of blue silk interwoven with silver threads, and to wear with it there was a vest or chemisette of delicate straw-coloured gauze, and a round velvet cap decorated with silver coins. The two women gazed at one another in astonishment as they unfolded the garments and smoothed them out. “What does it mean, Um Yusuf?” asked Cecil, almost in a whisper. “It look to me like wedding-dress, mademoiselle,” responded Um Yusuf, in the same awed tones. “Perhaps you going to be married.” “That is absurd, Um Yusuf,” said Cecil, with unusual sharpness. “But I won’t put it on, at any rate.” Presently the negress returned, and after a glance of surprise at the neglected finery, informed Cecil that the great ladies commanded her attendance. “What ladies?” asked Cecil. To her amazement the woman replied-- “The Um-ul-Pasha and the Kitchuk Khanum Effendi.” This was Jamileh Khanum’s official title. Cecil’s spirits rose with a bound. Here, at any rate, were foemen worthy of her steel, which was certainly not the case with the agas, who could only answer, “Khanum Effendi’s orders,” to all remonstrances, and she sprang up to follow the negress with keen anticipations of a coming struggle. “Perhaps they are come to Mosul for Azim Bey’s wedding with Safieh Khanum,” she whispered to Um Yusuf; but the good woman shook her head in perplexity. “Azim Bey not to be married until he seventeen,” she began, but just then their guide drew back a curtain and ushered them into the presence of the great ladies. Cecil had made up her mind what to do. The moment she observed that neither of the ladies made any reply or return to her salaam and salutation, she sat down at once without waiting to be invited, regardless of the contrast afforded by her travel-stained blue wrapper and yellow slippers to the wadded and fur-trimmed pelisse and trousers of green satin which formed the winter dress of the Um-ul-Pasha, or to Jamileh Khanum’s Parisian morning-robe of petunia velvet, with its front of costly lace. The ladies sat at the upper end of the room, facing her, the Um-ul-Pasha in the seat of honour in the corner of the divan, her daughter-in-law beside her. At a respectful distance sat Mdlle. Katrina, palpitating with eagerness. To this excellent woman conspiracy was the very breath of life. She would have plotted against herself cheerfully if she could by any means have imported sufficient mystery into the proceedings, and she had been the Um-ul-Pasha’s go-between with the outer world throughout her long series of plots. At her mistress’s command she now set to work to interpret her words to Cecil without further parley.