tocris in a tone loud
enough for every one to hear:

"I hope, Miss Marmion, that I have justified my intrusion by the skill
which my friend Phadrig has displayed for the entertainment of your
guests?"

She turned and looked at him, and, as their glances met, he saw a change
come over her. Her eyes grew darker: her features acquired an almost
stony rigidity utterly strange to her. His eyelids lifted quickly, and
he shrank back from her as a man might do who had seen the wraith of one
long dead, but once well known.

"Nitocris!" he murmured in Russian. "Phadrig was right: it is the
Queen!"

She swept past him--Oscar Oscarovitch, the man who aspired to the throne
of the Eastern Empire of Europe--as though he had been one of his own
slaves in the old days, and faced Phadrig.

"It is enough, Anemen-Ha that was. Hast thou not learned wisdom yet,
after so many lives? Is the inmost chamber of thy soul still closed in
rebellion against the precepts of the High Gods? No more of thy poor
little mummeries for the deception of the ignorant! Go, and without
further display of the weakness which thou hast presumptuously mistaken
for strength. The Queen commands--go!"

Only Phadrig and Franklin Marmion saw that it was not Nitocris, the
daughter of the English man of science, but the daughter of the great
Rameses who stood there crowned and robed as Queen of the Two Kingdoms.

Phadrig raised the palms of his hands to his forehead, bowed before her,
and murmured:

"The Queen has but to speak to be obeyed! It is even as I feared. But the
Prince----"

"I who was and am, know what thou wouldst say. Go, or----"

"Royal Egypt, I go! But as thou art mighty, have mercy, and make the
manner of my going easy."

Nitocris turned away with a gesture of utter contempt, walked slowly
towards her father, and said in English:

"Dad, I think our friend the Adept is a little tired after his
wonder-working. I dare say most of us would be if we could do what he
has been doing. He seems quite exhausted. I think you had better ask the
Prince to let his coachman take him home."

Oscar Oscarovitch's soul was in a tumult of bewilderment, but his almost
perfect training made it possible for him to say as quietly as though he
had been taking leave of his hostess at a reception in London:

"Miss Marmion, we must thank you for your great consideration. As you
say, our friend is undoubtedly fatigued, and, as I have an appointment
at the Embassy thi