the big estate
bounded on one side by that of the man opposite her.

"There is only one more thing I can suggest," said the deep, clear
voice, "and that is that you go over to Egypt yourself. Who knows if
you might not pick up a clue. Detectives have failed, though I think
we made a mistake in employing English ones, they hardly seem tactful
or subtle enough for the East."

Certainly one would have hardly applied either adjective to Detective
John Gibbs, who, bull-necked and blustering, had pushed and bullied his
way through Egypt's principal cities in search of Jill.

"How like Jill not to have sent us a line," remarked Jack Wetherbourne
for the hundredth time as he lit a cigarette.

"Oh, but as I have said before, she may have had sunstroke, and lost
her memory, or have been stolen and put away in a harem. She's not
dead, that's certain, because she had her hand told before she left on
her last trip, and she's to live to over eighty."

"That's splendid," was Wetherbourne's serious answer to a serious
statement, as he rose on the entry of Lady Bingham, who, having at the
same moment finished her knitting wool and the short commons of
consecutive thought of which she was capable, had meandered in on
gossip bent, looking quickly and furtively from one to the other for
signs of an understanding which would join the estates in matrimony, a
pact upon which her heart was set. And seeing none, she sat down with
an irritated rustle, which gathered in intensity until it developed
into a storm of expostulating petulance when she heard of the proposed
programme.

On the stroke of eleven Mary got up and walked down the broad
staircase, and through the great hall, and out on to the steps beside
the very splendid man beside her, and they stood under the moon, whilst
a nightingale bubbled for a moment, and _yet_ they were silent.

"Dear old girl," said Jack Wetherbourne, as he pushed open the little
gate in the wall which divided their lands, and waved his hand in the
direction of the old Tudor house.

"Dear old Jack," murmured Mary as her capable hand reached for a
chocolate as she sat on the window-seat and waited until she heard the
faint click of the gate, upon which she waved her handkerchief.

Prosaic sayings, prosaic doings, but those three prosaic words meant as
much, and a good deal more to them, than the most exquisite poetical
outburst, written or uttered, since the world began, might mean to us.

CHA