"What are you going to ask her to do?" Meg did not know the pain her words had given him; he spoke huskily.

"She's going to advise me what to do." Meg raised herself from her reclining position. "She will help me, if Michael's ill, Freddy."

"I don't suppose he is--I think we'd have heard."

"I think that's why we haven't heard," Margaret said quickly.

Freddy remained silent. He thought otherwise. He had a man's knowledge of men. If Millicent Mervill was with him, he did not for one moment believe that even Mike would be proof against such temptation.

"If he is ill," Meg said, "the Iretons will find out. They are in such close touch with native life. Anyhow, they understood Mike and I want to see them."

Meg's last words were a little cry. Freddy could only feel pity for her, although her words stung him. She must actually go from him to strangers for the sympathy she needed.

"Well, I won't stop you, but I think it's a pity. Whatever made you think of such a thing?"

"The thing that you call inspiration, chum--I know another name for it now."

Freddy looked amazed; Meg had absorbed so many of Mike's strange ideas.

"I don't know Ireton," he said. His voice had grown colder.

"He married a Syrian--you wouldn't. The Lamptons don't do that sort of thing."

Freddy kept his temper, and the moment after Meg had said the words she felt ashamed, disgraced.

"I'm sorry, chum." She spoke gently. "It's my tongue that says these hateful things, not my heart. Forgive me, like a dear."

"All right, old girl." Freddy had never told his sister that he had refused the hospitality and cut himself off from the friendship of more than two English families, residents in Cairo, because they had taken a prominent part in the outcasting of Michael Ireton from English society when he had married Hada.s.sah Lekejian. He knew that Margaret had spoken the words hastily and unthinkingly. When Meg's nerves were on edge was the only time she was ever cross and out of temper. "The Iretons are delightful people. If I'd known Ireton when he was a bachelor, I should have visited them after his marriage, but I didn't, and I haven't much time for paying society calls. Besides, it might have looked like patronizing them. The way they were treated by some of the English out here was so abominable that one had to be jolly careful. Ireton never minded a sc.r.a.p--he's too big to care for the social rot that goes on out here, but all the same, I didn't like to make a point of calling. I'm a digger, Meg, not a resident with a house to invite people to."

"From what Mike told me, they must be the most delightful people. I can't imagine Hada.s.sah snubbing me if I went to see her, can you?"

"I don't suppose she would. What will you say to her? It's a rum idea." Freddy became meditative.

"I don't know, but whatever one arranges to say on such occasions is just the thing one doesn't say. The atmosphere will suggest the words--it always does with me. I've never yet said the things I planned to say. Have you?"

"Scarcely ever, but it might be well to think things out." Freddy disliked the idea of confiding family secrets to strangers. "When do you think of going?"

"When you leave here, I can go straight to Cairo. It will be cooler there. I don't know Cairo--don't forget, I've never seen even the Pyramids."

"And when do you mean to go home? The season's getting on."

"I don't know. It all depends on what news I can gather, or if a letter comes. I can easily stay in Cairo until I hear. You won't object to that?"

"No. It's beastly hot here, by Jove!" Freddy poured himself out a lemon-squash and drank it off. "I'm not sorry it's time to go home."

"I don't feel the heat very much--the nights keep pretty cool."

"You're looking f.a.gged, all the same."

"Oh, I'm all right--it's anxiety that kills. If only I was certain that he wasn't ill, Freddy!"

"I don't see why you should think Mike's ill. He's leading an awfully healthy life. He's well accustomed to the desert. It's cooler with him than it is here."

"I know, but it's a very strained life. I have a conviction that he's ill. Whenever I think intently of him, I see him ill and suffering.

These things must have their meaning."

"I think we should have heard if he was ill. We got the other news quick enough, didn't we!"

Meg frowned.

"It will be cooler in Cairo, but give me your word that you personally won't do anything foolish in the way of looking for Michael, or going off alone into the desert."

"No, I won't do anything foolish. That's not in my line, is it now? I have some Lampton common sense."

"Not about some things."

Meg laughed. "Wait till you know what it is like, chum."

"Well, you'll not forget your other promise?"

Meg thought for a moment before answering and then she said emphatically, "No, I won't forget my promise. I'm not in the least afraid that I shall be tempted to break it."

"You have promised to go back to England if you find undeniable proof that Michael and Millicent were together in the desert."

"Yes, I promise. I will go back to the old life, which seems like a dream." Meg gave a little shiver as she visualized her old-world Suffolk home and the narrowness of her life there. "Any old place would do, chum, to bury myself in if my heart was broken."

CHAPTER XIII

Through a labyrinth of narrow streets, echoing with native cries and Oriental traffic, a wonderful sight and sensation to strangers unfamiliar with Cairene commercial life, Margaret Lampton found her way to "the home of enchantment," as she afterwards called the Iretons'

ancient mansion. It was a native house, typical and expressive of the most resplendent years of the Mameluke rule in Egypt.

A licensed guide, with a bra.s.s-lettered number on his arm, in a blue cotton jebba and a scarlet fez, had volunteered to show her the way; it would have been impossible for a stranger to find it alone. The Cairene licensed guides, although they are pests, have their uses.

As Margaret pa.s.sed under the lintel of the outer door, which led into a quiet courtyard, of Hada.s.sah Ireton's house, a Nubian servant rose from the stone _mastaba_--the guards' seat--upon which he had been lying half asleep; he conducted her with the silence of a shadow to the gate of the inner or women's courtyard. This courtyard was overlooked by the women's quarters of the house only.

Margaret rather timidly entered the second courtyard. She scarcely knew what to expect. She was certainly not prepared for the vision of beauty which she saw directly the door was opened. She had heard nothing at all of the fantastic beauty of the superb old Mameluke palaces in Cairo; she did not know that the Iretons lived in one.

A fat servant, also a Nubian, but more amply clad the guard at the outer door, rose from a wooden seat, grown grey with age. With the same silence and mystery he conducted Margaret across the courtyard.

Margaret could, of course, only glance at the bewildering beauty of her mediaeval surroundings as she followed the servant, but brief as her vision of it was, it left a never-to-be-forgotten picture in her mind.

A vision of coolness and peace, of oriel windows--chamber-windows for unreal people, jealously screened with weather-bleached _meshrahiyeh_ work--and one high balcony, the special feature of the courtyard, a dream of romantic beauty, shaded by the dark leaves of an ancient lebbek tree. It was a vision as dignified as it was touching. It was like a lost piece of a world which had pa.s.sed away, a lonely cloud which had detached itself from a world of romance and had hidden itself in the heart of a seething city of ugliness and sin.

Surprise temporarily drove from Margaret's mind the object of her visit; it was not until she was seated in the s.p.a.cious room which overlooked the courtyard, and whose front wall consisted of the _meshrahiyeh_ balcony--it was now Hada.s.sah Ireton's drawing-room--that she was brought face to face with the unusualness of her visit.

The room was beautifully cool, screened as it was by the delicate lace-work. _Meshrabiyeh_ was invented to fill two wants--to screen the windows through which women could look out, without being seen themselves, and to admit fresh air while it excluded the sun. It is a subst.i.tute for gla.s.s in a warm climate.