He takes her in to dinner, certainly, later on, but finds, on seating himself, that Roger, by some unaccountable chance, has secured the seat on her other side. He finds out, too, presently, that she is devoting all her conversation to her cousin, and seems curiously inquisitive about his travels. She appears indeed positively athirst for information on this subject; and the soup is as naught, and the fish as sawdust, in the eyes of Mr. Gower. "You were in Egypt, too? Tell me all about it. I have always so _longed_ to hear about Egypt," says Dulce, with soft animation. "Egypt?" says Roger, with some natural hesitation as to how to begin; Egypt is a big place, and just now seems a long way off. "Well, there is a good deal of it, you know; what do you want to know most?" "Whether you enjoyed yourself--whether you were happy there?" replies she, promptly. I daresay it isn't quite the answer he had expected, because he looks at her for half a minute or so very intently. "Happy? That includes such a great deal," he says, at length. "It is a very interesting country beyond doubt, and there are Pyramids, you know; you heard of 'em once or twice, I shouldn't wonder; and there are beggars and robbers, and more sand than I ever saw in my life, and--_No_," with a sudden, almost startling change of tone, "I was _not_ happy there, or anywhere else, since last I saw you!" "Robbers!" says Dulce, hastily, with a rather forced little laugh; "regular brigands, do you mean, going about in hordes, with tunics, and crimson sashes, and daggers. How _could_ one be happy with such terrible people turning up at every odd corner? I daresay," trifling nervously with a wine glass, "it would make one often wish to be at home again." "I often wished to be at home again." Somehow his manner gives her to understand that the gentlemen in crimson sashes had nothing whatever to do with this wish. "I fancied brigands belonged exclusively to Greece and Italy," says Dulce, still intent upon the wine-glass. "Are they very picturesque, and do they really go about dressed in all the colors of the rainbow?" Plainly Miss Blount has been carefully studying the highly-colored prints in the old school-books, in which the lawless Greeks are depicted as the gayest of the gay. "They are about the most ill-looking ruffians it has ever been my fate to see," says Mr. Dare, indifferently. "How disappointing! I don't believe you liked being in Egypt after all," says Dulce, who cannot resist returning to tread once more the dangerous ground. "I think one place is about as good as another," says Mr. Dare, discontentedly, "and about as bad. One shouldn't expect too much, you know." "Perhaps it would be as well if one didn't expect anything," says Dulce. "_Better_, no doubt." "You take a very discontented view of things; your traveling has made you cynical, I think." "Not my _traveling_?" This is almost a challenge, and she accepts it. "What then?" she asks, a little coldly.