through Margaret, made the suggestion of its
loss and finding.

Seventhly, and lastly, was the strange dual existence which Margaret
seemed of late to be leading; and which in some way seemed a
consequence or corollary of all that had gone before.

The dual existence! This was indeed the conclusion which overcame all
difficulties and reconciled opposites. If indeed Margaret were not in
all ways a free agent, but could be compelled to speak or act as she
might be instructed; or if her whole being could be changed for another
without the possibility of any one noticing the doing of it, then all
things were possible. All would depend on the spirit of the
individuality by which she could be so compelled. If this
individuality were just and kind and clean, all might be well. But if
not! ... The thought was too awful for words. I ground my teeth with
futile rage, as the ideas of horrible possibilities swept through me.

Up to this morning Margaret's lapses into her new self had been few and
hardly noticeable, save when once or twice her attitude towards myself
had been marked by a bearing strange to me. But today the contrary was
the case; and the change presaged badly. It might be that that other
individuality was of the lower, not of the better sort! Now that I
thought of it I had reason to fear. In the history of the mummy, from
the time of Van Huyn's breaking into the tomb, the record of deaths
that we knew of, presumably effected by her will and agency, was a
startling one. The Arab who had stolen the hand from the mummy; and the
one who had taken it from his body. The Arab chief who had tried to
steal the Jewel from Van Huyn, and whose throat bore the marks of seven
fingers. The two men found dead on the first night of Trelawny's taking
away the sarcophagus; and the three on the return to the tomb. The
Arab who had opened the secret serdab. Nine dead men, one of them
slain manifestly by the Queen's own hand! And beyond this again the
several savage attacks on Mr. Trelawny in his own room, in which, aided
by her Familiar, she had tried to open the safe and to extract the
Talisman jewel. His device of fastening the key to his wrist by a
steel bangle, though successful in the end, had wellnigh cost him his
life.

If then the Queen, intent on her resurrection under her own conditions
had, so to speak, waded to it through blood, what might she not do were
her purpose thwarted? What terrible step might she