Also they carried bouquets. Certainly they were poets. When Lady
Helen entered they surged up to her, uttering little artistic foreign
cries. And they kissed her hand. She gave their bouquets to the footman
with an air of fascinating disdain. Their dejection was delightful. But she consoled them with a smile and advanced to us. Certainly she
had changed. I had known her as a somewhat unconventional and piquant
débutante. She was now a brilliant siren, an accomplished coquette and
a woman of the world. Her tiny stature made her attractive, for she
was perfectly proportioned and her costume ravishingly emphasised the
petite and dainty grace of her figure. Her face was reminiscent of one
of those wild flowers of torrid regions which resemble nothing grown in
an English garden, but which, nevertheless, arrest attention and charm
by their bizarrerie. It was full of eerie wisdom, subtle wilfulness
and quaint, half-humorous diablerie. In one word, she was a sprite. She greeted her husband with an unctuous affectation of interest which
would have made me, in his place, wish to box her ears. Hubbard,
however, was as good an actor as herself. He protested he was grateful
for the audience and claimed credit for introducing me. Lady Helen
looked me up and down and remembered that I had owed her a letter for
nearly thirty-seven months. She gave me the tips of her fingers and
then rushed away to kiss on both cheeks a lady who had just entered. "Oh, you darling!" she twittered. "This is just too lovely of you. I
have longed for you to come." It was May Ottley. She did not see me at once. Lady Helen utterly
engrossed her. I had, therefore, time to recover from the unexpected
shock of her appearance. I was ridiculously agitated. I slipped into an
alcove and picked up a book of plates. At first my hands shook so that
I could hardly turn the pages. Hubbard glided to my side. I felt his
smile without seeing it. "I smell a brother idiot," he whispered. I met his eyes and nodded. "In Egypt, of course?" "Yes." "She marries a guardsman next month, I hear." "Indeed." "The poor man," murmured Hubbard. "Come out and let us drink his
health." "No, thank you." "You'd rather stay and singe your wings, poor moth." "And you?" "Mine," said he, "were amputated in St. James Church. She is a lovely
creature, Pinsent." "Which?" He chuckled without replying. A footman pompously announced: "Mrs.
Carr--Lord Edward Dutton." "Bring the tea, please," said Lady Helen's voice. "She is staring this way at you," murmured Hubbard. "She recognises
your back. No, not quite, she is puzzled." "She has never seen me in civilised apparel," I explained. "Are you afraid of her, my boy?" "Yes." "Well, you are honest." I began to listen for her voice. The air was filled with scraps of
conversation. "Three thousand, I tell you. He cannot go on like that. Shouldn't
wonder if he went abroad. Like father, like son. Old Ranger had the
same passion for bridge." "You can say what you like, names tell one nothing. In my opinion the
man is a Jew. What if he does call himself Fortescue? Consider his
nose. I am tired of these rich colonials. I have no time for them. Heaven knows what they are after." "She will spoil her lower register completely if she keeps on. Her
voice is a mezzo and nothing else. You should have seen the way old
Delman sneered when he listened to her last night." "My test of a really fine soprano is the creepy feeling the high C
gives one in the small of the back. Delicious. She never thrills me at
all." "Oh! Lord Edward, how malicious. What has the poor man done to you?" "He plays billiards too well to have been anything but a marker in his
youth. I believe he kept a saloon somewhere in the States." "They say it will end in the divorce court. That is what comes of
marrying a milkmaid. And, after all, she did not present him with a
son. Ah, well, it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Young
Carnarvon is his heir still, and his chances of succeeding grow rosier
every day." "My dear Mrs. Belvigne, if it was not for her red hair, she would be as
commonplace as--as my dear friend Mrs. Sorenson. What you men see in
red hair----"

"Conscience, Lady Helen, is a composition of indulgences. It is a
marriage de convenance between the conventional instinct and the
appetite." "Dr. Pinsent," said Miss Ottley, "is it really you?" I turned and looked into her eyes. They were all aglow and her cheeks
were suffused with colour. She gave me both her hands. The room
was already crowded. People entered every minute. Hubbard pointed
significantly at the tea-cups. Miss Ottley and I drifted to the divan. We watched the crowd through the parted curtains, sipping our tea. We
might as well have been in a box at the theatre watching the play. "I knew you would escape," she murmured, presently. "The others
believe you to have perished in the desert." "They consoled themselves, no doubt?" "My father especially." "Did he recover his Arab?" "What Arab?" "The creature he had imprisoned in the sarcophagus." "The mummy, you mean. The body of Pthames? Oh, yes, that was safe
enough, but he was in a fearful state until we found the punt. He
feared that you would either steal or destroy the mummy, I believe." "Miss Ottley!" I cried. "You must not blame him too much," she murmured; "you know how he had
set heart----"

"Look here!" I interrupted. "Do you mean to tell me that you found the
mummy in the sarcophagus?" "Certainly. Why?" "Did you see it?" "Yes." "The mummy?" "Why, of course." "A dead body, a mummy?" "Dr. Pinsent, how strangely you insist." "I'll tell you the reason. When I opened the sarcophagus----"

"Yes." "It contained not a mummy, but a living man." "Impossible." "You think so? The Arab was the very man who frightened you so often in
the temple at the Hill of Rakh." "Dr. Pinsent!" "When I removed the lid he leaped out of the sarcophagus, sprang ashore
and fled to the desert. I followed him for several miles. But I could
not catch him. I was compelled to give up the chase. And now you tell
me that you afterwards found a mummy in the coffin which I had left
empty." "One of us is dreaming," said the girl. "What was this mummy like?" "A tall man--with a curious conical-shaped head--and eyes set hideously
far apart in its skull--but you have seen the Arab who frightened
me--and indeed he attacked you at your camp. His mummified counterpart." "And some of his ribs were broken?" "I do not know." "But his body was bandaged. Otherwise he was almost nude." "Good heavens!" she exclaimed. She put down her cup. "You make me very
unhappy. You force me to recall my horror--in the cave temple. The
wretched uncanny sense of the supernatural that oppressed me there. You
make me remember that I was tortured into a fancy that the mummy was a
ghost--that we were haunted--that--oh! oh! And father has been so kind
to me lately, kinder than ever before." "He is in London?" "Yes." "And the mummy?" "Yes." "And Dr. Belleville?" "He is staying with us."