insane,
flooded his mind darkly.

Leaving the hospital, which harboured a grim secret, he stood at the
gate for a moment, undecided what to do. His father, Dr. Cairn, was
out of London, or he would certainly have sought him in this hour of
sore perplexity.

"What in Heaven's name is behind it all!" he asked himself.

For he knew beyond doubt that the girl who lay in the hospital was the
same that he had seen one night at Oxford, was the girl whose
photograph he had found in Antony Ferrara's rooms!

He formed a sudden resolution. A taxi-cab was passing at that moment,
and he hailed it, giving Sir Michael Ferrara's address. He could
scarcely trust himself to think, but frightful possibilities presented
themselves to him, repel them how he might. London seemed to grow
dark, overshadowed, as once he had seen a Thames backwater grow. He
shuddered, as though from a physical chill.

The house of the famous Egyptian scholar, dull white behind its
rampart of trees, presented no unusual appearances to his anxious
scrutiny. What he feared he scarcely knew; what he suspected he could
not have defined.

Sir Michael, said the servant, was unwell and could see no one. That
did not surprise Cairn; Sir Michael had not enjoyed good health since
malaria had laid him low in Syria. But Miss Duquesne was at home.

Cairn was shown into the long, low-ceiled room which contained so many
priceless relics of a past civilisation. Upon the bookcase stood the
stately ranks of volumes which had carried the fame of Europe's
foremost Egyptologist to every corner of the civilised world. This
queerly furnished room held many memories for Robert Cairn, who had
known it from childhood, but latterly it had always appeared to him in
his daydreams as the setting for a dainty figure. It was here that he
had first met Myra Duquesne, Sir Michael's niece, when, fresh from a
Norman convent, she had come to shed light and gladness upon the
somewhat, sombre household of the scholar. He often thought of that
day; he could recall every detail of the meeting--

Myra Duquesne came in, pulling aside the heavy curtains that hung in
the arched entrance. With a granite Osiris flanking her slim figure on
one side and a gilded sarcophagus on the other, she burst upon the
visitor, a radiant vision in white. The light gleamed through her
soft, brown hair forming a halo for a face that Robert Cairn knew for
the sweetest in the world.

"Why, Mr. Cairn," she said, and