Page:Guy Boothby--A Bid for Fortune.djvu/51

Rh to entertain any thought of you after what he said to me on board ship. It was the first time in my life he ever spoke to me in such a tone, and I felt it keenly. No, Dick, there is something behind it all that I cannot understand. Some mystery that I would give anything to fathom. Papa has not been himself ever since we started for England. Indeed, his very reason for coming at all is to me a mystery. And now that he is here he seems in one continual dread of meeting somebody but who that somebody is, and why my father, who has the name and reputation of being such a courageous, determined, honourable man, should be afraid, is a thing I cannot understand."

"It's all very mysterious and unfortunate. But can nothing be done? Don't you think if I were to see him again, and put the matter plainly before him, something might be arranged?"

"It would be worse than useless at present, I fear. No, you must just leave it to me, and I'll do my best to talk him round. Ever since my mother died I have been as his right hand, and it will be strange if he does not listen to me and see reason in the end."

Seeing who it was that would plead with him I did not doubt it.

By this time we had wandered through many rooms, and now found ourselves in the Egyptian Department, surrounded by strange dead folk and weird objects of all sorts and descriptions. There was something almost uncanny about our love-making in such a place, among these men and women whose wooings had been conducted in a country so widely different to ours, and in an age that was dead and gone over two thousand years ere we were born. I spoke of this to Phyllis. She laughed and gave a little shiver.