The Duchess began to cry silently. Big tears ran down a face from which the glow of feeling had long fled, but her eyes were sad enough. “Gone--gone! It is the end!” was all she could say. Lord Windlehurst frowned, though his eyes were moist. “We must act at once. You must go to Egypt, Betty. You must catch her at Marseilles. Her boat does not sail for three days. She thought it went sooner, as it was advertised to do. It is delayed--I’ve found that out. You can start to-night, and--and save the situation. You will do it, Betty?” “I will do anything you say, as I have always done.” She dried her eyes. “She is a good girl. We must do all we can. I’ll arrange everything for you myself. I’ve written this paragraph to go into the papers to-morrow morning: ‘The Duchess of Snowdon, accompanied by Lady Eglington, left London last night for the Mediterranean via Calais, to be gone for two months or more.’ That is simple and natural. I’ll see Eglington. He must make no fuss. He thinks she has gone to Hamley, so the butler says. There, it’s all clear. Your work is cut out, Betty, and I know you will do it as no one else can.” “Oh, Windlehurst,” she answered, with a hand clutching at his arm, “if we fail, it will kill me.” “If she fails, it will kill her,” he answered, “and she is very young. What is in her mind, who can tell? But she thinks she can help Claridge somehow. We must save her, Betty.” “I used to think you had no real feeling, Windlehurst. You didn’t show it,” she said in a low voice. “Ah, that was because you had too much,” he answered. “I had to wait till you had less.” He took out his watch. CHAPTER XL. HYLDA SEEKS NAHOUM It was as though she had gone to sleep the night before, and waked again upon this scene unchanged, brilliant, full of colour, a chaos of decoration--confluences of noisy, garish streams of life, eddies of petty labour. Craftsmen crowded one upon the other in dark bazaars; merchants chattered and haggled on their benches; hawkers clattered and cried their wares. It was a people that lived upon the streets, for all the houses seemed empty and forsaken. The sais ran before the Pasha’s carriage, the donkey-boys shrieked for their right of way, a train of camels calmly forced its passage through the swirling crowds, supercilious and heavy-laden. It seemed but yesterday since she had watched with amused eyes the sherbet-sellers clanking their brass saucers, the carriers streaming the water from the bulging goatskins into the earthen bottles, crying, “Allah be praised, here is coolness for thy throat for ever!” the idle singer chanting to the soft kanoon, the chess-players in the shade of a high wall, lost to the world, the dancing-girls with unveiled, shameless faces, posturing for evil eyes. Nothing had changed these past six years. Yet everything had changed. She saw it all as in a dream, for her mind had no time for reverie or retrospect; it was set on one thing only.