"Those French sisters of charity are the admiration of all the troops. Even the stupid Turks adore them, and are bewildered by a devotion and purity of purpose which their sensual souls cannot understand. Mademoiselle, we have no language to describe what we owe to your order." The sister of charity gave the colonel a pleasant smile, and a bow full of grace and good humour. "Our visit," said he, "is necessarily a hurried one. We are all in full puff, as you may see, Norcliff, for this afternoon the cavalry division is to be reviewed before Omar Pasha and Marshal St. Arnaud." "Hence my Lord Lucan is most anxious that each and all should appear in his best bib and tucker," added Studhome. After they were gone, I turned again to thank the gentle sister of charity for the journey she had made, on a hot and breathless day, through a camp of more than eighty thousand foreign troops, to serve me. She only gave me one of her pleasant smiles, and; taking the miniature of Louisa from the tripod table, said in a low voice, "Is this the lady from whom you expect letters?" "Yes." She shook her head sadly, as if her survey of the tiny portrait had not proved satisfactory. "Why do you look thus, _ma soeur_? What do you see?" "Much of dangerous beauty; but more of pride, of caution, tact, and cold decision. The eyebrows nearly meet—I don’t like that. The eyes are lovely; but—but——" "What?" I asked, almost imperiously. "I dare not say it. I may be guilty of the sin of detraction." "Nay, speak, I beg of you. The eyes are lovely, you say, but——" "Have an untruthful expression." "Ah, good heavens, don’t say so!" My heart sank as she spoke, and I sighed deeply. "I have seen such eyes and brows once before, and I remember the sorrow they wrought." The paragraph which I had read in the London morning paper, on board the _Ganges_, in the harbour of Valetta—that fulsome paragraph, at which Berkeley had smiled so complacently and covertly—came to my memory word for word now. Was it possible that the journal was true, and Louisa false? After an uncomfortable pause, I related to the sister the strange episode which occurred at the house of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig. "_Magique!_" she exclaimed, while her large eyes became larger still, and she crossed herself three several times with great earnestness. "_O Sainte Dame!_ you tried the art of the great fiend, did you?" "Who—I? Not at all! How could I? Don’t imagine anything so absurd. The man is only a trickster, like Houdin or Herr Frickel." But she seemed so horrified at me, and "the art that none may name," that I was fain to explain that the whole affair originated in the suggestion of Studhome, and some of the officers of the 2nd Zouaves, in a moment of idleness. "I can tell you many a tale of the wickedness of having recourse to magic, and the retribution which falls on those who do so," said she. "Have you ever read the writings of the fathers?"