e's passionate lips that sought to kiss him.

"Not yet can I forgive thee," he said. "Be content that I shall not kill
thee, girl. Perhaps, if thy acts have failed in their end, I may forgive
thee; not yet."

He carried her around to the great rock, and through the passage into
the great chamber, bursting in upon a situation of growing intensity.
Dolores sat on a corner of the table, with all her seductive lures in
her beautiful face, smiling invitingly at Rupert Venner. Craik Tomlin
glared at both, yet his gaze seemed hard to restrain from wandering
around the gorgeous chamber, whose wealth he saw now for the first time.
Venner, too, had been seized by the jewel-hunger, although neither he,
nor Tomlin, guessed at the immensely greater wealth that had been
revealed to Pearse. As for Pearse, he sat glowering in his chair,
nervous and smoldering; ready at a hint to draw steel without caring
what the object. He simply saw rivalry where fifteen minutes before he
had thought his own course clear.

Milo appeared to them; carrying his sobbing burden, and the interruption
brought a blaze of fury to Dolores's face. She went pale, and her hands
clenched and opened nervously.

"Well, slave?" she cried, and Milo started. Never had she used that tone
to him.

"Sultana, I thought thou wert alone," he replied, haltingly. "I have
brought Pascherette to thee for forgiveness."

"I forgive? Pish! What care I for thy chit? Take her where ye will, and
trouble me not with such trash. Out, now! Let me not see her face again,
and I care not what ye do with her. But haste. I have work for thee and
a score of slaves. Bring them here quickly!"

Silently Milo bore Pascherette to the small room beyond the great
chamber, which had been her resting-place while not in attendance on
Dolores. And there, still shaking his head to her plea, though with
deepening trouble in his eyes, he left her, crying herself into a fitful
slumber.

Then with slaves dragged from the corners where they had cowered during
the fight, he entered the great chamber, and at Dolores's command set
them to carrying out the closed treasure-chests that stood in their old
places around the walls.

And the sight of the great chests actually going out brought fiery
jealousy back to the eyes of the three yachtsmen. Now Dolores
half-closed her own inscrutable eyes, and watched them, catlike,
cunning. Pearse sprang from the great chair and began pacing the floor
in a heat. Ven