In the midst of the glow and the glamour cast upon him by the girl’s entrance, Lauriston was startled by the voice of Rahas close to his ear: “Will you not acknowledge now that it was my influence over her which brought her down?” “No,” answered the young Englishman in a husky voice, “her own words prove that it was mine.” The merchant shrugged his shoulders, and with a bow to the lady, who was too much occupied with her companion to notice it, retreated behind the screen into the curtained room. CHAPTER VII. George Lauriston was very much in love; but all the circumstances of his love adventure were so strange, so mysterious, that at this moment, when the supernatural appeared to have come to the aid of the simply marvellous, the chill of some uncanny horror seemed to check his passion, and he looked down at the girl by his side rather as on some fairy changeling than as on the beautiful woman who had lately usurped such an undue share of his inmost thoughts. After a short silence Nouna looked up, half timidly, half saucily: “Have you then nothing to say to me? Is a week so long a time that you have forgotten I speak your language?” “I have forgotten nothing about you,” said he, not encouraging her clinging pressure on his arm, but standing up stiff and straight, with his eyes fixed on the screen and the curtains behind it. “I will come and see you and Mrs. Ellis to-morrow, Nouna, it is too late for me to stay now.” She followed the glance of his eyes, and suddenly dropping his arm made a cat-like bound to the screen, and pulled it down. A figure was seen to move away quickly, like a shadow, from behind the curtains, and the next moment Rahas came through them. “Who is in that room?” asked Nouna imperiously. “My uncle, Nouna. Why are you so excited?” “Your uncle Fanah? No one else?” “No one.” He stepped back and opening the curtains again, said a few words in a language strange to Lauriston. A little old man with a grey beard and a dried-up, wrinkled face, wearing a crimson turban and a very simple Eastern dress, came slowly in and bowed to the stranger. “Are you satisfied now?” asked Rahas. “Ye--es,” said the girl doubtfully, passing her hand over her eyes and shivering, “I suppose so.” Then, turning to Lauriston, she continued, with the tone of a child playing at royalty, “You will honour me by coming up stairs to my apartments for a few minutes. I will not detain you long.”