cautiously.

"Unaccountably, when you have eaten nothing since breakfast. You
weird man, I believe you are a mummy yourself."

But the Professor had again returned to examine the scarabeus,
this time with a powerful magnifying glass.

"It certainly belongs to the twentieth dynasty," he murmured,
wrinkling his brows.

Mrs. Jasher stamped and flirted her fan pettishly. The
creature's soul, she decided, was certainly not in his body, and
until it came back he would continue to ignore her. With the
annoyance of a woman who is not getting her own way, she leaned
back in Braddock's one comfortable chair--which she had
unerringly selected--and examined him intently. Perhaps the
gossips were correct, and she was trying to imagine what kind of
a husband he would make. But whatever might be her thoughts, she
eyed Braddock as earnestly as Braddock eyed the scarabeus.

Outwardly the Professor did not appear like the savant he was
reported to be. He was small of stature, plump of body, rosy as
a little Cupid, and extraordinarily youthful, considering his
fifty-odd years of scientific wear and tear. With a smooth,
clean-shaven face, plentiful white hair like spun silk, and neat
feet and hands, he did not look his age. The dreamy look in his
small blue eyes was rather belied by the hardness of his thin-
lipped mouth, and by the pugnacious push of his jaw. The eyes
and the dome-like forehead hinted that brain without much