"Alas, nothing happened to me," said Lady Warcliff, with that air of mingled petulance and candour which was the chief of her charms. "Aden was a simple inferno with heat and dust. I saw Arthur, and tried to get him to come on here with me, but the call of the partridges was stronger than my eloquence. He hurried home, and I came back and stopped for two nights to explore Mombasa. My story is a very dull one. How did you enjoy the East Coast?" she asked, turning to Mrs Deloraine.
"It was all I had hoped for. We put into little decayed wayside ports, with a background of palms and green–shuttered white houses. All were hot and some smelt abominably, but there is nothing quite like them elsewhere. You feel around them still the romance of that greatest of the Crusades, the Portuguese Age of
