human heart, you would not have ruined all that might
have given you an undying love, something that would have followed
you through fire and flood to the grave. You cannot love. You do not
understand love. Self--self, always self. Oh, you are mad, mad, to have
thrown it all away, all that might have given happiness! All that I
have, all that I am, has been at your service; everything has been bent
and tuned to your pleasure, for your good. All has been done for
you, with thought of you and your position and your advancement, and
now--now, when you have killed all that might have been yours, you cry
out in anger that it is dying, and you insinuate what you should kill
another for insinuating. Oh, the wicked, cruel folly of it all! You
suggest--you dare! I never heard a word from David Claridge that might
not be written on the hoardings. His honour is deeper than that which
might attach to the title of Earl of Eglington."

She seemed to tower above him. For an instant she looked him in the eyes
with frigid dignity, but a great scorn in her face. Then she went to the
door--he hastened to open it for her.

"You will be very sorry for this," he said stubbornly. He was too
dumfounded to be discreet, too suddenly embarrassed by the turn affairs
had taken. He realised too late that he had made a mistake, that he had
lost his hold upon her.

As she passed through, there suddenly flashed before her mind the scene
in the laboratory with the chairmaker. She felt the meaning of it now.

"You do not intend to tell him--perhaps Soolsby has done so," she said
keenly, and moved on to the staircase.

He was thunderstruck at her intuition. "Why do you want to rob
yourself?" he asked after her vaguely. She turned back. "Think of your
mother's letter that you destroyed," she rejoined solemnly and quietly.
"Was it right?"

He shut the door, and threw himself into a chair. "I will put it
straight with her to-morrow," he said helplessly.

He sat for a half-hour silent, planning his course.

At last there came a tap at the door, and the butler appeared.

"Some one from the Foreign Office, my lord," he said. A moment
afterwards a young official, his subordinate, entered. "There's the
deuce to pay in Egypt, sir; I've brought the despatch," he said.

CHAPTER XXVIII. NAHOUM TURNS THE SCREW

Laughing to himself, Higli Pasha sat with the stem of a narghileh in his
mouth. His big shoulders kept time to the quivering of his fat stoma