unlike his resourcefulness. I could not believe it of him, and so,
when I had time to control mind and tongue, I said as much to Biddy.

"Yes, I felt like that, too, at first," she admitted. "He gives one the
impression of being so infallible in any emergency, somehow, as if he'd
be above it, and look down on it from his height. But it's more than
twelve hours since he went, and he promised to send me word how things
were going on if he couldn't get to me himself. No word has come."

"What have you done?" I asked. "Have you communicated with the police?"

"Sir Marcus Lark has. He was at the ball, and has been very good. But
it's for Mrs. East's sake, mostly. One feels he's glad it happened, to
give him the chance to win her gratitude--or something. He's been back
and forth all day; and I'm expecting him any minute. Mrs. East has been
fainting and hysterical, and everything early Edwardian, so I sent for
a doctor. But she's better on the strength of _sal volatile_ and
eggnog, and she's promised to see Sir Marcus."

"Now tell me what happened, from the beginning," I said, when I had
made Biddy sit down by me on the sofa, and was trying to warm a cold
little hand in mine.

What it all amounted to, told disjointedly, was this: Since Monny had
had an inspiration the day after our arrival in Cairo, to give Rachel
Guest a lot of her new unworn clothes, Rachel had become quite girlish
and "flighty." She had lost her puritan primness, and behaved more in
accordance with her slanting eyes than with her bringing up. She
giggled like a schoolgirl rather than a schoolmistress, tried to make
herself look young, and copied Monny in the way she tilted her hat and