ever wish to see her again. Their separation was final and complete.

"'She deceived me cruelly,' he said; 'I cannot tell you how cruelly.
During the two years when I was trying to obtain my father's consent to
our marriage she was in lore with a Russian diplomat. During all that
time he was secretly visiting her here in London, and her trip to Cairo
was only an excuse to meet him there.'

"'Yet you are here with her tonight,' Arthur protested, 'only a few
hours after your return.'

"'That is easily explained,' Chetney answered. 'As I finished dinner
tonight at the hotel, I received a note from her from this address. In
it she said she had but just learned of my arrival, and begged me to
come to her at once. She wrote that she was in great and present
trouble, dying of an incurable illness, and without friends or money.
She begged me, for the sake of old times, to come to her assistance.
During the last two years in the jungle all my former feeling for
Ziehy has utterly passed away, but no one could have dismissed the
appeal she made in that letter. So I came here, and found her, as you
have seen her, quite as beautiful as she ever was, in very good
health, and, from the look of the house, in no need of money.

"'I asked her what she meant by writing me that she was dying in a
garret, and she laughed, and said she had done so because she was
afraid, unless I thought she needed help, I would not try to see her.
That was where we were when you arrived. And now,' Chetney added, 'I
will say good-by to her, and you had better return home. No, you can
trust me, I shall follow you at once. She has no influence over me
now, but I believe, in spite of the way she has used me, that she is,