"Vastly lucky you've been, ma'am; _all_ your prayers about him, egad, seem to have been granted. Pity you did not pray for something he might have enjoyed more. But all's for the best--eh?" "All things work together for good--all for good," said the old lady, looking upward, with her hands clasped. "And you're as happy at his _conversion_, ma'am, as the Ulema who received him into the faith of Mahomet--_happier_, I really think. Lucky dog! what interest he inspires, what joy he diffuses, even now, in Mahomet's paradise, I dare say. It's worth while being a sinner for the sake of the conversion, ma'am." "Sir--sir, I can't understand," gasped the old lady, after a pause. "No difficulty, ma'am, none in the world." "For God's sake, _don't_; I think I'm going _mad_" cried the poor woman. "Mad, my good lady! Not a bit. What's the matter? Is it Mahomet? You're not afraid of _him_?" "Oh, sir, for the _Lord's_ sake tell me what you mean?" implored she, wildly. "I mean _that_, to be sure; what I _say_," he replied. "I mean that the gentleman complied with the custom of the country--don't you see?--and submitted to Kismet. It was his fate, ma'am; it's the invariable condition; and they'd have handed him over to his Christian compatriots to murder, according to Frank law, otherwise. So, ma'am, he shaved his head, put on a turban--they wore turbans then--and, with his Koran under his arm, walked into a mosque, and said his say about Allah and the rest, and has been safe ever since." "Oh, oh, oh!" cried the poor old lady, trembling in a great agony. "Ho! _no_, ma'am; 'twasn't much," said he, briskly. "All, all; the last hope!" cried she, wildly. "Don't run away with it, pray. It's a very easy and gentlemanlike faith, Mahometanism--except in the matter of wine; and even that you can have, under the rose, like other things here, ma'am, that aren't quite orthodox; eh?" said Mr. Dingwell. "Oh, Arthur, Arthur!" moaned the poor lady distractedly, wringing her hands. "Suppose, ma'am, we pray it may turn out to have been the right way. Very desirable, since Arthur died in it," said Mr. Dingwell. "Oh, sir, oh! I couldn't have believed it. Oh, sir, this shock--this frightful shock!" "Courage, madam! Console yourself. Let us hope he didn't believe this any more than the other," said Mr. Dingwell. Mrs. Mervyn leaned her cheek on her thin clasped hands, and was rocking herself to and fro in her misery. "I was with him, you know, in his last moments," said Mr. Dingwell, shrugging sympathetically, and crossing his leg. "It's always interesting, those last moments--eh?--and exquisitely affecting, even--_particularly_ if it isn't very clear _where_ the fellow's going." A tremulous moan escaped the old lady. "And he called for some wine. That's comforting, and has a flavour of Christianity, eh? A _relapse_, don't you think, very nearly?--at so unconvivial a moment. It must have been _principle_; eh? Let us hope."