‘Do you think I have grown fatter, Lady Annabel?’ said Lord Cadurcis, starting up; ’I brought myself down at Athens to bread and olives, but I have been committing terrible excesses lately, but only fish.’

‘Ah! here is George!’ said Lady Annabel.

And Captain Cadurcis appeared, followed by a couple of sailors, bearing a huge case.

‘George,’ said Venetia, ’I have been defending you against Plantagenet; he said you would not come.’

‘Never mind, George, it was only behind your back,’ said Lord Cadurcis; ’and, under those legitimate circumstances, why even our best friends cannot expect us to spare them.’

‘I have brought Venetia her toys,’ said Captain Cadurcis, ’and she was right to defend me, as I have been working for her.’

The top of the case was knocked off, and all the Turkish buffooneries, as Cadurcis called them, made their appearance:  slippers, and shawls, and bottles of perfumes, and little hand mirrors, beautifully embroidered; and fanciful daggers, and rosaries, and a thousand other articles, of which they had plundered the bazaars of Constantinople.

’And here is a Turkish volume of poetry, beautifully illuminated; and that is for you,’ said Cadurcis giving it to Herbert.  ’Perhaps it is a translation of one of our works.  Who knows?  We can always say it is.’

’This is the second present you have made me this morning.  Here is a volume of my works,’ said Herbert, producing the book that Cadurcis had before given him.  ’I never expected that anything I wrote would be so honoured.  This, too, is the work of which I am the least ashamed for my wife admired it.  There, Annabel, even though Lord Cadurcis is here, I will present it to you; ‘tis an old friend.’

Lady Annabel accepted the book very graciously, and, in spite of all the temptations of her toys, Venetia could not refrain from peeping over her mother’s shoulder at its contents.  ‘Mother,’ she whispered, in a voice inaudible save to Lady Annabel, ‘I may read this!’

Lady Annabel gave it her.

‘And now we must send for Pauncefort, I think,’ said Lady Annabel, ’to collect and take care of our treasures.’

‘Pauncefort,’ said Lord Cadurcis, when that gentlewoman appeared, ’I have brought you a shawl, but I could not bring you a turban, because the Turkish ladies do not wear turbans; but if I had thought we should have met so soon, I would have had one made on purpose for you.’

‘La! my lord, you always are so polite!’

CHAPTER V.

When the breakfast was over, they wandered about the valley, which Cadurcis could not sufficiently admire.  Insensibly he drew Venetia from the rest of the party, on the pretence of showing her a view at some little distance.  They walked along by the side of a rivulet, which glided through the hills, until they were nearly a mile from the villa, though still in sight.