iment in this.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

IV

Simpkins received a monosyllabic telegram from Naylor, instructing him
to "stay," but after working in the Society's office for another three
days he was about ready to give up all hope of getting at the facts.
Some other reason, he scarcely knew what, kept him on. Perhaps it was
Mrs. Athelstone herself. For though he appreciated how ridiculous his
infatuation was, he found a miserable pleasure in merely being near her.
And she was pleased with her new clerk, amused at what she called his
quaint Americanisms, and if she noticed his too unrepressed admiration
for her, she smiled it aside. It was something to which she was
accustomed, an involuntary tribute which most men who saw her often
rendered her.

She never referred, even indirectly, to her husband, but Simpkins,
as he watched her move about the hall, divined that he was often in
her thoughts. And there was another whom he watched--Brander; for he
felt certain now that the acting president's interest in his handsome
secretary was not purely that of the Egyptologist. And though there was
nothing but a friendly courtesy in her manner toward him, Simpkins knew
his subject well enough to understand that, whatever her real feelings
were, she was far too clever to be tripped into betraying them to him.
"She doesn't wear her heart on her sleeve--if she has a heart," he
decided.

He was trying to make up his mind to force things to some sort of a
crisis, one morning, when Mrs. Athelstone called him to her desk and
said rather sharply:

"You've been neglecting your work, Simpkins. Isis looks as if she hadn't
been dusted since you came."

This was the fact. Simpkins never passed the black altar without a
backward glance, as if he were fearful of an attack from behind. And he
had determined that nothing should tempt him to a tete-a-tete with the
statue behind the veil. But having so senseless, so cowardly a feeling
was one thing, and letting Mrs. Athelstone know it another. So he only
replied:

"I'm very sorry; afraid I have been a little careless about the statue."
And taking up a soft cloth, he walked toward the altar.

It was quite dark behind the veil; so dark that he could see nothing at
first. But after the moment in which his eyes grew accustomed to the
change, he made out the vague lines of the statue in the faint light
from above. He set to work about the pedestal, touching it gingerly at