Cecil’s relations with her pupil continued to be of the happiest character. In the seclusion of their own courtyard he was almost always with her. He was perfectly content to be silent if she was busy, and possessed the happy faculty of being able to do nothing and yet not get into mischief. But stories were what he delighted in, and all the pranks of Fitz, Terry, Patsy, and Loey were recounted over and over again, until he knew the boys as well as their sister did. It was a remarkable and gratifying thing about him that he never seemed inclined to imitate any of these tricks. He was too much grown up, indeed, to do anything of the kind, and it was from this very fact that Cecil’s first great difficulty in dealing with him arose. It so happened that she was not called upon to face this difficulty until one day in the height of summer, when she was feeling unusually weak and exhausted. She was only just recovering from an attack of fever, and the heat seemed stifling, even in the semi-darkness of the cellar schoolroom, with its carefully shaded windows close to the ceiling. She had succeeded in getting through the morning’s lessons somehow, but she found it impossible to provide Azim Bey with his daily instalment of story. Upon this he volunteered to tell her a story instead, while one of the negresses sat by and fanned her, and she prepared herself to listen with considerable interest. Whatever the story was, Azim Bey seemed to be quite excited about it, and she wondered whether he had inherited the Arab gift of improvisation. He sat thinking for a few minutes, and then, with very little preface, began to pour into her horrified ears such a tale as made her hair almost stand on end. At first she could only gaze at him in speechless horror as he spoke, accompanying his words with much vigorous descriptive action, but at last she found her voice, and burst forth with crimson face-- “Bey, be silent! How dare you repeat such things? Where did you learn that?” “In a book, mademoiselle, a delightful book. Ah, magnificent!” he added, slowly, smacking his lips as if he enjoyed the recollection. “Who gave it you?” gasped Cecil. “M. Karalampi: he has given and lent me many, for two--three years. Ah, the dear pink and yellow books, how I love them!” “And you have been reading these books ever since I came, and you never told me!” said Cecil, in deep reproach. Her pupil became penitent at once. “Ah, mademoiselle,” he cried, flinging himself down beside her, and seizing her hand, “he told me not to tell you. He said the English hated French books, and could not understand them, and he used to send them into my apartments at night. But at last I thought I would see whether you did understand. O mademoiselle, my dear mademoiselle, why are you weeping?” “Because I am not fit to have the charge of you,” said Cecil, sadly, dashing away the gathering tears. “I never thought of this. Oh, Bey, I trusted you!”