Terence O'Rourke, Gentleman Adventurer
For Senet was born honest—which, though he himself had no suspicion of the fact, was the precise reason why he had been chosen for the post he then filled. His immediate predecessor had been a man of placid instincts, untroubled by any manner of scruples whatsoever, and had grown rich by selling protection papers to any one who came along with cash-on-the-nail purchase money.
All of which, of course, had been exceedingly detrimental to the moral tone of the United States Consular Service in Morocco.
And so a paternal government had selected Mr. William Everett Senet to adorn the vacant consulship at Tangiers, and to prove to the honest Moor that there really were honest Americans, after all.
Senet had accepted with considerable relief; he happened to be wanting to get away from home for reasons of his very own, and he fancied that a residence in a strange, semi-barbaric land like Morocco would fill his life with new interests, and help him to forget certain matters which he earnestly desired to forget.
Item: One American girl, who had married a German title. Item: Her eyes, which haunted the young man. Item: A nasty rumor which he had heard from some gossipy Americans returning from a residence in Berlin, and which had been confirmed by discreetly vague paragraphs in the New York papers. And there were other items, all disturbing.
But once in Morocco, Senet found work sufficiently engrossing to send him to bed at bedtime so tired that he went promptly and sweetly to sleep and forgot to he awake and watch for the coming of the eyes, with their distractingly beautiful, serious, and troubled expression that so nearly maddened the young American.
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