only way out of the difficulty, while
we are here, is for us to pretend to care nothing about each other--that
the past was only a matter of a passing flirtation, and not to be taken
seriously. Do you follow my plan?"

"Yes; but I don't like it."

"That can't be helped. Do you suppose I like it? But it will not be
for long. I am going away very soon--it might be any day now--home
again. Then we can make up for the present hateful restraint. What is
to prevent you returning by the same steamer? You will, Maurice,
darling--you will--will you not?" she urged, clinging closer to him, and
looking up into his eyes with a piteously hungering expression, as
though fearing to read there the faintest forestalment of a negative.
But her fears were groundless.

"Will I? I should rather think I would. Listen, Violet. This mad
expedition of poor Fanning's has turned up trumps. I have that about me
at this moment which should be worth two or three hundred thousand
pounds at least. Only think of it. We have the world at our feet--a
new life before us. You are, as you say, going home. But it will be to
a real home!"

She looked into his eyes--her gaze seemed to burn into his--her breast
was heaving convulsively.

They understood each other.

"Do you mean it, Maurice?" she gasped. "My darling, do you really and
truly mean it?"

"Mean it? Of course I do. It was with no other object I went risking
my life a dozen times a day in that ghastly desert. With the wealth
that is ours we can afford to defy all the world--that she-devil
included. And we will."

"Yes, we will."

Their lips met once more, and thus the compact was sealed. Alas--poor
Violet! She had given herself over, bound, into the enemy's hand. She
had sold herself, and the price paid was the price of blood--even the
blood of him who had sacrificed his own life for her sake.

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX.

SELLON'S LAST LIE.

But that he held the key to it in the shape of Violet's communication,
the reserve, not to say coldness, of his reception by the family, would
have astonished Sellon not a little. Now, however, it in no wise
disconcerted him; rather, it struck him in the light of a joke. He had
got his cue, and meant to act up to it.

So when his somewhat involuntary host asked if he would mind giving him
a private interview, he replied with the jolliest laugh in the world--

"Certainly, certainly, my dear fellow. Delighted, Well, Miss E