Here several of the party paused for a few moments to gaze through another muslin-draped portal into the drawing-room, whose shaded lamps with their heavy silken fringes cast a subdued light upon a group, the sight of which had a strange effect upon several of the men. There, in the darker part of the beautifully-furnished room, where the taste of Paris was mingled with the highest and airiest ornamentation of the East, sat little Mrs Doctor very far back in a cane chair--wide awake, as she would have declared had anyone spoken, but with her mouth open, and a general vacancy of expression upon her countenance suggestive of some wonder visible in the land of dreams. Close by her, upon a low seat, was Grey Stuart, looking very simple and innocent in her diaphanous white dress; but there was trouble in her gentle eyes, and her lips seemed pinched as if with pain, as now and then one of her hands left the work upon which she was engaged to push back a wave of her thick soft hair. She too was partly in shadow, but as she pushed back the thick fair hair, it was possible to see that there were faint lines of care in her white forehead, for she too was gazing at the group that had taken the attention of the gentlemen leaving their dessert. For in the centre of the room, just where the soft glow of one of the shaded lamps formed quite a halo round her glistening dark hair, and seemed to add lustre to her large, well-shaped eyes, reclined Helen Perowne. Her attitude was graceful, and evidently studied for effect. One hand rested on the back of the well-stuffed ottoman, so as to display the rounded softness of her shapely arm; while her head was thrown back to place at the same advantage her creamy-hued well-formed throat, and at the same time to allow its owner to turn her gaze from time to time upon the companion standing beside her, grave, statuesque, and calm, but with all the fire of his Eastern nature glowing in his large dark eyes, which needed no interpreter to tell the tale they told. "A nigger now!" said Lieutenant Chumbley to himself, with a look of contempt at the handsome young hostess. "Well, there's no knowing what that girl would do." "The rajah--the sultan!" muttered Captain Hilton, with a furiously-jealous look. "How dare he! The insolent, dark-skinned cad!" "Flying at a seat upon an ivory throne in a palm-tree palace, eh, Helen?" mused the Resident, with a quiet smile. "Well, you will exhaust them all in time?" These thoughts ran through the brains of each of the spectators of the little scene within the drawing-room in turn, but only one of the dinner-party spoke aloud, and that was in a low voice in another's ear. It was the little Scotchman, Grey Stuart's father, who spoke, as he laid his hand upon his host's shoulder. "Perowne, mahn," he whispered, "ye'll have a care there, and speak to your lass, for there'll be the deil's own mischief, and murder too, if she leads that fellow on." VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.