Carlton poured out his coffee, with a shake of his head, and frowned.  “Oh, you can laugh,” he said, “but I didn’t sleep at all last night.  I lay awake making speeches to her.  I know they are going to put me between the wrong sisters,” he complained, “or next to one of those old ladies-in-waiting, or whatever they are.”

“How are you going to begin?” said Miss Morris.  “Will you tell her you have followed her from London—­or from New York, rather—­that you are young Lochinvar, who came out of the West, and—­”

“I don’t know,” said Carlton, meditatively, “just how I shall begin; but I know the curtain is going to rise promptly at eight o’clock—­about the time the soup comes on, I think.  I don’t see how she can help but be impressed a little bit.  It isn’t every day a man hurries around the globe on account of a girl’s photograph; and she is beautiful, isn’t she?”

Miss Morris nodded her head encouragingly.

“Do you know, sometimes,” said Carlton, glancing over his shoulders to see if the waiters were out of hearing, “I fancy she has noticed me.  Once or twice I have turned my head in her direction without meaning to, and found her looking—­well, looking my way, at least.  Don’t you think that is a good sign?” he asked, eagerly.

“It depends on what you call a `good sign,`” said Miss Morris, judicially.  “It is a sign you’re good to look at, if that’s what you want.  But you probably know that already, and it’s nothing to your credit.  It certainly isn’t a sign that a person cares for you because she prefers to look at your profile rather than at what the dragomans are trying to show her.”

Carlton drew himself up stiffly.  “If you knew your Alice better,” he said, with severity, “you would understand that it is not polite to make personal remarks.  I ask you, as my confidante, if you think she has noticed me, and you make fun of my looks!  That’s not the part of a confidante.”

“Noticed you!” laughed Miss Morris, scornfully.  “How could she help it?  You are always in the way.  You are at the door whenever they go out or come in, and when we are visiting mosques and palaces you are invariably looking at her instead of the tombs and things, with a wistful far-away look, as though you saw a vision.  The first time you did it, after you had turned away I saw her feel to see if her hair was all right You quite embarrassed her.”

“I didn’t—­I don’t!” stammered Carlton, indignantly.  “I wouldn’t be so rude.  Oh, I see I’ll have to get another confidante; you are most unsympathetic and unkind.”  But Miss Morris showed her sympathy later in the day, when Carlton needed it sorely; for the dinner towards which he had looked with such pleasurable anticipations and lover-like misgivings did not take place.  The Sultan, so the equerry informed him, had, with Oriental unexpectedness, invited the Duke to dine that night at the Palace, and the Duke, much to his expressed regret, had been forced to accept what was in the nature of a command.  He sent word by his equerry, however, that the dinner to Mr. Carlton was only a pleasure deferred, and that at Athens, where he understood Carlton was also going, he hoped to have the pleasure of entertaining him and making him known to his sisters.