MY DEAR GOOD DUFFER!

For any sake hurry back. Make an excuse to leave your pilgrims the
minute you get this, and take the first train to Cairo. Surely the late
conductor can be your understudy, and trot the people round Alexandria
for a day? We need you more than they do. I picture you reading this
early in the morning, with Alexandria still in the distance; for you
said you'd arrange to have letters come out to the yacht by the pilot.
I shall expect a telegram saying by what train you'll arrive here in
the afternoon. You'll understand when I've told you everything, why
it's _necessary_ for you to hurry.

We have done and seen so many things, it seems years instead of days
since you left us in care of that handsome Hadji of yours. I wonder if
really you didn't suspect that I guessed who he was; or _did_ you
suspect; and didn't care? I caught the look in your eyes, when you
first saw him standing under the terrace at Shepheard's, and then, when
the name "Antoun Effendi" came up in the conversation, I put two and
two together. Mrs. East guesses, also. I don't know if she did from the
first, but she does now. It isn't a question of "guessing" with either
of us, really. It's a certainty. Not that she's said anything to me or
I to her. That is the malady of us all since you went. We are boiling
with secret thoughts, and keeping them to ourselves, which is bad for
us and for each other in the long run. I haven't told Monny that the
"Egyptian Prince," as Rachel Guest has nicknamed him, is your friend
Captain Anthony Fenton playing some deep game, partly connected with
us, partly connected with a secret of his and yours; the secret you
said was a "dusty" one in which women would not be interested. I
haven't told her, because I don't want her to know. She is always
talking and thinking about him, and is vexed with herself for doing so.