High on each side of the path were wild orange-trees, pinky-white with blossoms and headily sweet. Scarlet hibiscus flaunted great flowers the size of her two hands; lilies sprang everywhere on the lower ground; pink and white heaths showered her with their tiny petals as she brushed past thickets of them. “I can’t walk so fast,” said Beryl from behind her. “Tell him to wait.” Egerton looked round. “It is not a good place to loiter in, this low ground,” he observed; “the scents are heady in the early morning.” Andria, to her surprise, saw that his hurry was not put on; he was glancing round him with real apprehension. And what could there be to fear in a paradise of flowers like this? “Do you mean there is fever here?” she asked, catching up to him. “No,” he answered shortly; “merely what I said. The flowers give one headache; the place is overgrown with them.” It was to a certainty. Blossoms she had never heard of dangled sweet-scented tassels in her face; the soft, warm air was like a greenhouse. But she had no time to look as Egerton hurried on. The path, at times, was but a thread; she had to help Beryl over rocks and through thickets, for her head was still dizzy from the voyage. And all the while the anxiety on their guide’s face was plain; it shook Andria’s nerves in spite of herself. Suddenly the rough path ended among great rocks, higher than a man’s head. Egerton led the way through them, and they emerged suddenly on an open space of coarse turf, with great trees scattered over it. Hot and breathless as she was, Andria saw that the apprehension was gone from Egerton’s face; whatever their danger had been, it was past. “There is the house,” he said; and as they went slowly across the dewy grass an exclamation broke from her. She had expected a low wooden bungalow. The house that they came on from behind a screen of trees was fit for a palace. High and white it stood in the morning sun, built of creamy stone; all porticos and shady verandas. Green jalousies shaded the balconies, and behind the great pile the ground sloped upward, so that it stood against a background of flowering trees. Yet something in the look of the place filled Andria with terror. She, who feared nothing since she had nothing left to dread, felt her blood turn cold. The house looked evil; evil and wickedness lurked in it as in a nightmare; the orange and scarlet creepers that decked the lower verandas flaunted like sins in the morning sun. As she went up the broad, white steps and crossed the threshold into the hall, a shudder of unutterable fear took her. And yet there was nothing but luxury in the room she entered. She looked at Beryl. There was only weariness in the girl’s face as she sat down in the first chair she came to and looked listlessly about her.