Now and again a bevy of Turkish ladies glided by: mere
peripatetic bundles of white linen, closely-veiled and yellow-slippered; or
a Greek in his white petticoat, fierce in aspect and armed to the teeth; or
an Armenian merchant, Arnauts, Bashi-Bazouks, French Spahis, the Bedouins
of the desert, but half-disguised as civilised troops, while occasionally
there appeared, amidst the heterogeneous throng, the plain suit of grey
dittoes worn by the travelling Englishman, or the more or less simple
female costumes that hailed from London or Paris.
Misseri's hotel did a roaring trade. It was crowded from roof-tree to
cellar. Rooms cost a fabulous price. Mrs. Wilders managed to be very
comfortably lodged there notwithstanding.
She still lingered in Constantinople. Her anxiety for her husband
forbade her to leave the East, although she told her friends it was
misery for her to be separated from her infant boy. She might have
had a passage home in a dozen different steamers returning empty, all
of them in search of fresh freights of men or material; or there was
Lord Lydstone's yacht still lying in the Golden Horn and ready to take
her anywhere if only she said the word. But that, of course, was out
of the question, as she had laughingly told her husband's cousin more
than once when he had placed the _Arcadia_ at her disposal.
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