_is_ her nephew right enough," Mansfield corrected his wife, before
proceeding to his own man's form of elaboration; "no question about
that, I believe. He's her favourite nephew, and she's as rich as a pig.
He follows her out here every year, waiting for her empty shoes. But
they _are_ an unsavoury couple. I've met 'em in various parts, all over
Egypt, but they always come back to Helouan in the end. And the stories
about them are simply legion. You remember--" he turned hesitatingly to
his wife--"some people, I heard," he changed his sentence, "were made
quite ill by her."

"I'm sure Felix ought to know, yes," his wife boldly took him up, "my
niece, Fanny, had the most extraordinary experience." She turned to
Henriot. "Her room was next to Lady Statham in some hotel or other at
Assouan or Edfu, and one night she woke and heard a kind of mysterious
chanting or intoning next her. Hotel doors are so dreadfully thin. There
was a funny smell too, like incense of something sickly, and a man's
voice kept chiming in. It went on for hours, while she lay terrified in
bed--"

"Frightened, you say?" asked Henriot.

"Out of her skin, yes; she said it was so uncanny--made her feel icy.
She wanted to ring the bell, but was afraid to leave her bed. The room
was full of--of things, yet she could see nothing. She _felt_ them, you
see. And after a bit the sound of this sing-song voice so got on her
nerves, it half dazed her--a kind of enchantment--she felt choked and
suffocated. And then--" It was her turn to hesitate.

"Tell it all," her husband said, quite gravely too.

"Well--something came in. At least, she describes it oddly, rather; she
said it made the door bulge inwards from the next room, but not the door
alone; the walls bulged or swayed as if a huge thing pressed against
them from the other side. And at the same moment her windows--she had
two big balconies, and the venetian shutters were fastened--both her
windows _darkened_--though it was two in the morning and pitch dark
outside. She said it was all _one_ thing--trying to get in; just as
water, you see, would rush in through every hole and opening it could
find, and all at once. And in spite of her terror--that's the odd part
of it--she says she felt a kind of splendour in her--a sort of elation."

"She saw nothing?"

"She says she doesn't remember. Her senses left her, I believe--though
she won't admit it."

"Fainted for a minute, probably," said Mansfield.

"