y doctor child sick?"

"No, not sick: but miserable." And he explained to her, as well as he
could, what had passed. "But," said he, "I would not mind the loss of
the diamonds now, if I was only sure he was alive. I think most of poor,
poor Mrs. Falcon."

While Ucatella pondered this, but with one eye of demure curiosity on
the coronet he was making, he told her it was for her--he had not forgot
her at the mines.

"These stones," said he, "are not valued there; but see how glorious
they are!"

In a few minutes he had finished the coronet, and gave it her. She
uttered a chuckle of delight, and with instinctive art, bound it, in a
turn of her hand, about her brow; and then Staines himself was struck
dumb with amazement. The carbuncles gathered from those mines look like
rubies, so full of fire are they, and of enormous size. The chaplet had
twelve great carbuncles in the centre, and went off by gradations into
smaller garnets by the thousand. They flashed their blood-red flames in
the African sun, and the head of Ucatella, grand before, became the head
of the Sphinx, encircled with a coronet of fire. She bestowed a look of
rapturous gratitude on Staines, and then glided away, like the stately
Juno, to admire herself in the nearest glass like any other coquette,
black, brown, yellow, copper, or white.

That very day, towards sunset, she burst upon Staines quite suddenly,
with her coronet gleaming on her magnificent head, and her eyes like
coals of fire, and under her magnificent arm, hard as a rock, a boy
kicking and struggling in vain. She was furiously excited, and, for the
first time, showed signs of the savage in the whites of her eyes,
which seemed to turn the glorious pupils into semicircles. She clutched
Staines by the shoulder with her left hand, and swept along with
the pair, like dark Fate, or as potent justice sweeps away a pair of
culprits, and carried them to the little window, and cried "Open--open!"

Dick Dale was at dinner; Phoebe lying down. Dick got up, rather crossly,
and threw open the window. "What is up now?" said he crossly: he was
like two or three more Englishmen--hated to be bothered at dinner-time.

"Dar," screamed Ucatella, setting down Tim, but holding him tight by the
shoulder; "now you tell what you see that night, you lilly Kafir trash;
if you not tell, I kill you DEAD;" and she showed the whites of her
eyes, like a wild beast.

Tim, thoroughly alarmed, quivered out that he had seen