I'm Mrs. Jones. But she's Monny's aunt--at least, she's a half-sister
of Peter Gilder, and as his only living relative his will makes her
Monny's guardian till the girl marries or reaches twenty-five. A
strange guardian! But he didn't know she was going to turn into
Cleopatra. She wisely waited to do that until he was dead; so it came
on only a year ago. It was a Bond Street crystal-gazer transplanted to
Fifth Avenue told her who she really was: you know Sayda Sabri, the
woman who has the illuminated mummy? It's Cleopatra's idea that Monny's
second mourning for Peter should be white, nothing but white."

"Her idea! But I thought Miss Monny, as you call her, adopted only her
own ideas. How can a mere half-aunt, labouring under the name of
Cleopatra, force her--"

"Well, you see, white's very becoming; and as for the Cleopatra part,
it pleases our princess to tolerate that. It's part of the queer
history that's mixing me up with the family. We've come to spend the
season in Egypt because Cleopatra thinks she's Cleopatra; also because
Monny (that's what she's chosen to call herself since she tried to lisp
'Resamond' and couldn't) because Monny has read 'The Garden of Allah,'
and wants the 'desert to take her.' That book had nothing to do with
Egyptian deserts; but any desert will do for Monny. What she expects it
to do with her exactly when it has taken her, on the strength of a Cook
ticket, I don't quite know; but I may later, because she vows she'll
keep me at her side with hooks of steel all through the tour--unless
something worse happens to me, or to some of us _because_ of me."
"Biddy, dear, don't be morbid. Nothing bad will happen," I tried to
reassure her.

"Thank you for saying so. It cheers me up. We women folk are so in the