"And you live all alone in that big house?" Jinny was murmuring. "Not exactly alone." McLean smiled. "There's Mohammed and Hassan and Abdullah and Alewa and Saord-el-Tawahi--" "What _do_ you call him when you are in a hurry?" laughed the girl. It was a tremendously pleasant evening. He had expected constraint and secret embarrassment and he had discovered this delightful interest and bright vivacity. And if beneath that interest and vivacity something lay forever stilled and chilled in Miss Jeffries' breast--like a poor hidden corpse beneath bright roses--why at two and twenty expectancies flourish so gayly that one lone bud is not long missed. And chagrin is sometimes a salutary transient shower, and self-confidence is all the more delicate for a dimming cloud. Moreover McLean's unconscious absorption was balm and blessing. When in startled realization of time and place he rose at last and she murmured laughing, "And after all you never met Aunt and Uncle!" he felt a queer blush tingle his cheek bones and a daring impulse shape the thought aloud that in that case he must come again. "We're here five days more," said Jinny, the explicit. Thoughtfully he repeated, "Five days," and said farewell. "Now if he decorously waits to the next to the last day--!" murmured Jinny to herself, her opinion of the Scots race hanging in the balance. He didn't. But it was not the initiative of the Scots race which brought him to her, late that very next afternoon, but a soiled looking note which he held crumpled in his hand. He found her at tea upon the veranda with her aunt and uncle and while he made conversation with the Pendletons he gave Miss Jeffries the note. "From our friend Ryder," he said with forced lightness. "It explains itself." But it certainly did not. It was a hasty scrawl to McLean, saying that Ryder was on his way with the museum finds and sending this ahead by runner, and that McLean must positively be at the Cairo Museum to meet him at five and would he please stop on the way and call at his hotel upon a Miss Jeffries and borrow a woman's cloak and hat and veil, or if she wasn't in, get them elsewhere. "What is it--another masquerade?" said Jinny blankly. McLean looked mutely at her and shook his head, but within him horrific suspicion was raging like a forest fire. He continued his converse with the Pendletons while Jinny went for the things; she returned with a small bag containing coat and hat and veil, and the announcement that she would go right over with him. "If the things aren't right I'll know what he wants," she declared, and then, smiling, "What _do_ you suppose he is up to now?" McLean felt that he didn't want to know. And most positively he didn't want her to know. But having lacked the instant inspiration to deny her, he could only acquiesce and wonder why he hadn't thought up some brilliant excuse.