g.

"I made a sneak with you," the boy whispered. "I say I your
dragoman, sir. You will be glad. You need such bright boy in
Assiout."

Billy thought it highly probable that he would. But the ladies
neither needed nor desired him now, and ringed in by feminine
disgust the two scorned intruders sat silent hour after hour while
the train went rushing south through the increasing darkness of the
night.

CHAPTER XVI

THE HIDDEN GIRL

Hour after hour the little boat held its steady course; hour after
hour the distant banks flowed past in changing scenes. Forward on
the narrow deck a girl sat in a lounge chair beneath a striped
awning and gazed out over the water. Squatting in the shade behind
her an old woman stared up out of half-closed eyes with pupils as
keen and bright under their puckered lids as the eyes of a watching
hawk.

No disturbing consciousness of this incessant scrutiny muffled the
serenity of the girl's appearance. Her hands lax in her lap, her
blue eyes quietly intent upon the view, she lay back in her chair
with as much confident unconcern as she might have shown in an opera
box. As a matter of incredulous fact she was feeling incredulously
at ease.

The terrible tension of those days in the palace was over--for the
time, at least. She did not understand this new move, she had been
bewildered ever since that early dawn, on Sunday, when the old woman
and the eunuch had rushed her into the limousine, driven her
swiftly through the empty streets to a landing place on the river
beyond the bridge, and hurried her on board this little boat, an old
_dahabiyeh_ reconstructed and given a new engine.

The Captain had not appeared except for a brief interview in the
vestibule where he had told her that the quarantine was prolonged
and that he was going to try to escape out of Cairo where the
authorities would not be aware, and would first try to smuggle her
out of the city, too. She must do exactly as the old woman indicated
and everything would be all right.

And she had said, "How exciting!" and "What fun!" with lips that
smiled pluckily in apparent acceptance of this flimsy excuse.

She had connected this flight with the pandemonium she had heard in
the palace the night before, and she guessed that in some way her
presence there had become embarrassing for the Turk. Perhaps her
friends had traced her! Perhaps Robert Falconer--for after all it
would only be Robert Falconer's flouted devotion,