ecognition, he knew that he would have need of all his luck and all
his wit. He stepped hastily forward.

"_Alhamdolillah_--Glory to God that he has permitted me to behold
you this day," he murmured, in the studiously sing-song Arabic that
might be expected from a humble Turkish woman in plain mantle and
yashmak. "May Allah continue to spread before thee the carpet of
enjoyment--" and then lower, almost muffled by the thick veil, "Can
you give me a moment--?"

Eagerly, significantly, his eyes met hers.

Half fearfully, Aimee flashed an excited look around her. The space
before the marriage throne had thinned, for there were no more
arrivals waiting to offer their congratulations and the guests were
clustering now about the tables for refreshment or drifting into the
next salon where behind firmly stretched silken walls a stringed
orchestra was playing.

Miss Jeffries alone was lingering near, but she moved off now--at a
secret look from Ryder--with an appearance of unconcern.

"I am going to try my vernacular on the bride," Ryder had told her.
"Don't linger or look alarmed. I won't give the show away."

So there was no one to overhear a low-toned colloquy between the
bride and the veiled woman, no one to note or wonder that the veiled
woman was speaking, strangely enough, in rapid English.

"When I didn't hear from you I had to come, to know if you received
the package and letter I sent--"

With a swift gesture of her little ringed hand Aimee drew from the
laces on her bosom that heavy gold locket.

"Indeed I have it--and the note, too, I found. But I could not write
you. There was no way--no one to trust to mail it. And they had
stolen my key," she whispered, and the confessing words with their
quiver of forlornness told Ryder something of the story of those
helpless days and nights.

He murmured, "I didn't dare write you more personally for fear they
would find the note."

"I understood. That plaid about the box--that was so clever a
warning. I kept the box and hunted in it."

"I wanted to tell you more about that locket. I dug it up myself
from the tomb I was excavating--do you remember how you wished that
I would dig from the sands whatever secret I most desired? And I
found that.... And it happened that at McLean's I had met the French
agent who was searching for any trace of the Delcasses, of the wife
and child of the explorer who had disappeared fifteen years before.
That miniature was your image,