afraid, Valerie, to trust yourself and your happiness to me?"

"I would trust myself with you anywhere," she answered, and as she said
it she pressed my hand and looked into my face with her brave sweet
eyes. "And for your sake I would do and bear anything."

Brave as her words were, however, a little sigh escaped her lips before
she could prevent it.

"Why do you sigh?" I asked. "Have you any doubt as to the safety of our
plan? If so tell me and I will change it."

"I have no doubt as to the plan," she answered. "All I fear is that it
may be useless. I have already told you how I have twice tried to escape
him, and how on each occasion he has brought me back."

"He shall not do so this time," I said with determination. "We will lay
our plans with the greatest care, behave toward him as if we
contemplated remaining for ever in his company, and then to-morrow
morning we will catch the train for Berlin, be in Hamburg next day, and
in London three days later. Once there I have half a hundred friends
who, when I tell them that you are hiding from a man who has treated you
most cruelly, and that you are about to become my wife, will be only too
proud to take you in. Then we will be married as quickly as can be
arranged, and as man and wife defy Pharos to do his worst."

She did her best to appear delighted with my plan, but I could see that
she had no real faith in it. Nor, if the truth must be told, was I in my
own heart any too sanguine of success. I could not but remember the
threat the man had held over me that night in the Pyramid at Gizeh: "For
the future you are my property, to do with as I please. You will have no
will but my pleasure, no thought but to act as I shall tell you."
However, we could but do our best, and I was determined it should not be
my fault if our enterprise did not meet with success. Not once but a
hundred times we overhauled our plan, tried its weak spots, arranged our
behaviour before Pharos, and endeavoured to convince each other as far
as possible that it could not fail. And if we did manage to outwit him
how proud I should be to parade this glorious creature in London as my
wife, and as I thought of the happiness the future might have in store
for us, and remembered that it all depended on that diabolical
individual Pharos, I felt sick and giddy with anxiety to see the last of
him.

Not being anxious to arouse any suspicion in our ogre's mind by a
prolonged absence, we at last agreed t