So there was other treasure! Like this, rich, wrought vessels, fine gold, pearls perhaps! And Zoraida did not yet know where it was; Barlow had had enough sense to keep his mouth closed. Jim Kendric's thoughts flew back and forth rapidly; the strange thing was that at a time like this the vision which shaped itself, vivid and clear cut in his mind, was of little Betty Gordon with a double string of pearls around her throat! "Of what are you thinking?" demanded Zoraida sharply. She had been watching him keenly. "There is a look in your eyes----" For an instant she almost dared think that that look was for her; Jim flushed. Zoraida's black brows gathered, her eyes went as deadly cruel as ever were the eyes of her ancient forebears though they watched the priests at the sacrificial stone. "You think of her!" she cried angrily. She stamped upon the stone floor, she clenched her hands and lifted them high above her head in a sudden access and abandon of rage. "You think that, having made mock of me, you shall turn to her? Fool! Seven times accursed fool! I will show you the doll-faced, baby-eyed girl--and you will see, too, what fate I have reserved for her. To cross the path of Zoraida means---- But what are words? You shall see!" With a strange sick sinking of his heart Kendric followed her, forgetting the treasure about him. CHAPTER XVI HOW TWO, IN THE LABYRINTH OF MIRRORS, WATCHED DISTANT HAPPENINGS An oppression such as he had never known fell upon Kendric. Nor was the depressing emotion an emanation alone of his growing dread on Betty's account; the atmosphere of the place through which he moved began to weigh him down, to crush the spirit within him. They left the treasure chamber which was six times doubly locked after them. They went through the ancient empty rooms and out into the gardens. Kendric, looking up, saw the small ragged patch of sky and felt as though upon his own soul, stifling him, rested the weight of the hollow mountain. To him who loved the fresh, wind-swept world, the open sea with its smell of clean salt air, the wide deserts where the sunshine lay everywhere, this pleasure grove of a long dead royalty was become musty, foul, permeated with an aura of a great gilded tomb. His sensation was almost that of a drowning person or of one awaking from a trance to find himself shut in the narrow confines of a buried coffin. The air seemed heavy and impure; he fancied it still fetid with all the blood of sacrificial offerings which the ravening soil had drunk.