Scarcely was Lady Hester installed with Bruce in a house at Cairo than she prepared for her visit to the pacha. She adopted for this solemn occasion a Berber costume, of which the wild magnificence suited her proud and independent demeanour. Trousers of dazzling silk laminated with gold, heavy robe of purplish velvet ornamented with rude and sumptuous embroidery, shawl of cashmere forming turban and girdle, sabre with hilt encrusted with precious stones. It had cost her more than £300. Bruce treated himself to a sword worth 1000 piastres. As for the doctor, he was satisfied with the modest apparel of an Effendi. The Pacha sent five horses richly caparisoned in the Mameluke fashion, on which Lady Hester and her suite mounted to go to the palace. They alighted only in the second court. Mehemet Ali, who had never seen Englishwomen, was greatly delighted at this interview, and awaited his fair visitor in a pavilion in the midst of the gardens of the harem. He rose to go to meet her and made her sit on divans of scarlet satin which were covered with precious filigree-work. Mosaics rambled over the open walls, singing all the gamut of blues: warm blues, blues deep and velvety, mauve blues, blues with reflections of silver. Stained-glass windows muffled the light received by the transparent enamels and arabesques of gold where slept dead turquoises, monstrous rubies and emeralds. A jet of water fell back weeping into a shining basin. Black slave girls handed crystal cups in which slowly dissolved sherbets made of pistachio-nuts. Lady Hester refused the pipe which was offered her; she was later on to smoke like a stove. By the aid of an interpreter, Mehemet Ali, who was a man of slight figure and richly dressed, talked with her for nearly an hour. This magnificent specimen of the English race was to fill him with admiration for a country which produced such women. Fascinated by her abnormal dimensions, attracted by the strength, the determination and the will which could be read on her haughty features, he compared her mentally to those comical beings who peopled his harem and asked himself if humanity were not composed of men, women and Englishwomen--an intermediary sex. Moreover, he reviewed his troops before her and made her a present of a magnificent Arab stallion. However, the handsome Mamelukes so celebrated had disappeared in the horrible massacre of the preceding year. Abdah Bey, who was the flower of the Court, was unwilling to be behindhand and presented her with a thoroughbred. These two horses were sent later to England: one to the Duke of York, for whom Lady Hester had retained a kindly preference, the other to Viscount Ebrington, under the care of the servant Ibrahim. Bruce was not forgotten in this exchange of compliments and received a sabre and a cashmere.