n the shoulder.

"Well, even if I caret do anything with that wild woman," she laughed
back at him, "you know Pauline bears a charmed life. Nothing has ever
happened to her yet. Guardian angels surround her--as well as
heroes."

Harry walked into the library. The agitated Margaret met Lucille on
the stairs.

"Miss Marvin is--Miss Marvin is not at home," the girl said, flushing
crimson.

Lucille paused, dumfounded.

"But, Margaret, you know I thought--I really thought she was, at
home, Miss Hamlin. I hope you won't be offended with me."

"I insist upon seeing her," cried Lucille. "I don't believe you are
telling me the truth. I'm going right up to her room."

Margaret burst into tears.

Lucille quickly reconsidered. Indignation took the place of
astonishment. She hurried down the stairs and rushed through the door
without waiting for Margaret to open it.

Pauline, back in her own room, vented her first rage in tears. With
her hot face pressed against the pillow, she sobbed out the agony of
what she thought her betrayal--her double betrayal, by courtier and
comrade at once. But the tears passed. Too vital was the spirit in
her, too red flowing in her veins was the blood of fighting ancestors,
too strong the fortress of self-command within the blossoming gardens
of her youth and beauty for the word surrender ever to come to her
mind.

True, she had found an adventure that stirred her more deeply than the
peril of land or sea or sky could have done. Here was a thrill that
had never been listed among her intended tremors. She sent for Owen.

Masked as ever in his suave exterior and his manner of mingled
obsequiousness and fatherliness, he came instantly.

"Mr. Owen, have you known--have you known that this was going on?"

"I feel that it is my duty to know what concerns you--even what
concerns your happiness, Miss Marvin," he answered.

"You mean?"

"I mean that I have long had my suspicions."

But again the very perfection of his deceit brought Pauline that
feeling that she had had since childhood that sense of an insidious
influence always surrounding her, always menacing and yet never
revealed. This influence, which Owen seemed to embody, was the
antagonist of that other mysterious power, so real and yet so
inexplicable, that warded and protected her--the spirit of the girl
that had stepped from the mummy.

But Pauline had seen with her own eyes; she did not need any word of
Owen's to