n, that any day might
see him entering the door of the Red Mansion.

Eglington himself was haunted by a spectre which touched his elbow by
day, and said: "You are not the Earl of Eglington," and at night laid
a clammy finger on his forehead, waking him, and whispering in his ear:
"If Soolsby had touched the wire, all would now be well!" And as deep as
thought and feeling in him lay, he felt that Fate had tricked
him--Fate and Hylda. If Hylda had not come at that crucial instant, the
chairmaker's but on the hill would be empty. Why had not Soolsby told
the world the truth since? Was the man waiting to see what course he
himself would take? Had the old chair-maker perhaps written the truth to
the Egyptian--to his brother David.

His brother! The thought irritated every nerve in him. No note of
kindness or kinship or blood stirred in him. If, before, he had
had innate antagonism and a dark, hovering jealousy, he had a black
repugnance now--the antipathy of the lesser to the greater nature, of
the man in the wrong to the man in the right.

And behind it all was the belief that his wife had set David above
him--by how much or in what fashion he did not stop to consider; but it
made him desire that death and the desert would swallow up his father's
son and leave no trace behind.

Policy? His work in the Foreign Office now had but one policy so far
as Egypt was concerned. The active sophistry in him made him advocate
non-intervention in Egyptian affairs as diplomatic wisdom, though it was
but personal purpose; and he almost convinced himself that he was acting
from a national stand-point. Kaid and Claridge Pasha pursued their
course of civilisation in the Soudan, and who could tell what danger
might not bring forth? If only Soolsby held his peace yet a while!

Did Faith know? Luke Claridge was gone without speaking, but had Soolsby
told Faith? How closely had he watched the faces round him at Luke
Claridge's funeral, to see if they betrayed any knowledge!

Anxious days had followed that night in the laboratory. His boundless
egotism had widened the chasm between Hylda and himself, which had been
made on the day when she fell ill in London, with Lacey's letter in
her hand. It had not grown less in the weeks that followed. He nursed
a grievance which had, so far as he knew, no foundation in fact; he was
vaguely jealous of a man--his brother--thousands of miles away; he was
not certain how far Hylda had pierced the disguise