Scheherazade by Florence Warden

When, true to his determination, George Lauriston visited the new establishment that evening and insisted on seeing the proprietor, an explanation offered itself which robbed Nouna's vision of most of the mystery attaching to it. For a dapper little Frenchman, who tried to live up to his obviously assumed business title of Ben Hassan by wearing a scarlet fez and a pair of Turkish slippers, immediately appeared behind the servant who opened the door, and announcing himself with a flourishing bow as the proprietor, thrust into Lauriston's hand a business card, and begged him to inspect his stock, adding that perhaps Monsieur would do him the honour to inaugurate his business and bring him good luck by purchasing some trifle. George consented. The Oriental bazaar consisted of three rooms fitted up with trestles on which were placed trays full of trumpery, gilt sequin necklaces, cheap scarves, and other so-called Eastern wares, such as may be bought for a very small sum in the smaller shops along the Rue de Rivoli. George bought a little feather hand-screen, obviously an "article de Paris," and returned to his wife quite satisfied that it was the sight of Monsieur Ben Hassan's red fez at one of the windows which had conjured up in her excited imagination the ground-floor in Mary Street and its younger occupant.

In order to convince his wife of her mistake, George took her next day to the establishment of Monsieur Ben Hassan, and was pleased to find that the nervous fear which had haunted her since her supposed vision faded away in the amusement of turning over the cheap trinkets and toys around her, as the obsequious proprietor, an active and voluble little Parisian, who would have been invaluable as a showman at a country fair, encouraged her to do. George asked him, to satisfy Nouna, whether he had not had a friend with him on the balcony two evenings before, a foreign gentleman, in whom, he said, he thought he recognised an old acquaintance. Ben Hassan said No, he had been working by himself to prepare his "Bazaar" for opening on the following day, and he had been alone except for the occasional assistance of the servant. He admitted also, with a charmingly candid shrug of the shoulders, that his name of Ben Hassan was assumed, that in private life he was simply Jules Dubois, and that there was no gentleman in the business who came from further East than the Faubourg Saint Antoine.