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“What next?” cried Charlie. “But you know she might refuse me, Cousin Elma. What then?”

“I think it is most probable that she would. She takes an interest in you, Charlie, but I don’t believe she cares for you at all in the way you want. Well, you know that she is to spend Sunday at the Residency whenever she is at Baghdad. Now do you think that she would find any peace and comfort in her Sundays if she were always obliged to meet a rejected lover with reproachful eyes? You would make her life a burden to her.”

“I might go away,” he murmured, dolefully enough, for it is one thing to despair of your own chances, and quite another to have them pronounced hopeless by some one else.

“Yes; and sacrifice your prospects irretrievably just as Sir Dugald has got you this post, in the hope that you would do better here with him than you have hitherto. I suppose you would intend such a move as a gentle intimation to poor Miss Anstruther that your ruin lay at her door? No, don’t be furious, my dear boy; I only say it looks like it. You would go away with some of those wild Arabs or Kurds, I presume; but would that be much better than living a civilised life at Baghdad, and seeing Cecil every Sunday?”