she's his only child."

He paused, ostensibly to blow an elaborate smoke ring, but actually
to enjoy McLean's astonishment. As astonishment, it was distinctly
vivid. It verged upon a genuine horror as Ryder's meaning sank into
his friend's mind.

McLean knew--slightly--Tewfick Pasha. He knew--supremely--the
inviolable seclusion of a daughter of such a household. He knew the
utter impossibility of any man's speech with her.

Yet here was Ryder telling him--

Ryder's telling him was a sketchy performance. He mentioned the
girl's appearance at the masquerade and their acquaintance. He
touched lightly upon her attempted flight and his pursuit. Even more
lightly he passed over those lingering moments at her garden gate
and the exchange of confidences.

"She said that her dead mother had been French. And that her name
was her mother's--Aimee. So there is--"

"But the likeness, man--her face? She never unveiled to you?"

"Well, the next night--"

"The _next_ night?"

It was at this point that Ryder began to lose his relish of McLean's
astonishment.

"Yes, the next night," he repeated with careful carelessness.... "I
told the girl I would come and see if she got in all right--there
had been some footsteps the night before--"

"And you went? And she came?"

"Do you suppose she sent her father?"

"You're lucky she didn't send her father's eunuch," McLean retorted
grimly. "Well, get on with your damning story. The girl took off her
veil--"

"Nothing of the kind," said Jack a trifle testily--so soon does
conventional masculinity champion the conservatism of the other sex!
"That was just as I was going--gone, in fact. I looked back and she
had drawn her veil aside. The moon was bright on her face--I saw her
as clear as daylight, and I tell you that this miniature is a
picture of her. She is Delcasse's daughter and she doesn't know it.
Her mother was stolen by that disgusting old Turk--"

"Hold on a bit. Fifteen years ago Tewfick could hardly have been
thirty and he has the rep of a Don Juan. It may have been a love
affair or it may have been plunder.... The girl remembers her?"

"Very little. She was so young when her mother died. She said that
the father was so in love that he never married again."

"H'm ... It seems to me that I've heard tales of our Tewfick and of
pretty ladies in apartments. Cairo is a city of secrets and
tattlers. However--as to this Delcasse inheritance, I'll just notify
the French leg