But still the little smile twisted the corner of Jill's red mouth as
she looked unflinchingly into the brown eyes in the depths of which
smouldered a something which was not good to look upon.

"I suppose you have stolen my dressing-case too," was her next,
somewhat irrelevant remark. "Men of _your_ type I dare say can find a
use for everything from women to hair-pins. You black _dog_, who _are_
you?"

Red murder flared in the room for one moment and then died down,
leaving a little smoke cloud of uncertainty in the man's mind.

He was used--oh, _very_ used to the breaking in of women, for was not
his name notorious in Northern Egypt and were there not whispers of
many young and beautiful who had mysteriously disappeared.

Were not men and women in his pay in every corner of the big cities
posing as honest individuals? And was he not in direct communication
with them? And had he not a coterie of jackal friends who hunted with
him, though of a truth not half so successfully or artistically as he?

And yet this slip of a girl, this pale white blossom, held him at bay,
more by her seeming indifference to the fate before her than by any
effort of will she made to combat the danger.

Blasé to tears of the exquisite women of his own country with their
lustrous brown eyes, marvellous languorous figures, and well-trained,
inherited ideas on love, the man was violently attracted by the
whiteness of this girl allied to her indifferent manner and an intense
virility which seemed to envelop her from head to foot.