Part 58 (2/2)

”I don't see why you should think Mike's ill. He's leading an awfully healthy life. He's well accustomed to the desert. It's cooler with him than it is here.”

”I know, but it's a very strained life. I have a conviction that he's ill. Whenever I think intently of him, I see him ill and suffering.

These things must have their meaning.”

”I think we should have heard if he was ill. We got the other news quick enough, didn't we!”

Meg frowned.

”It will be cooler in Cairo, but give me your word that you personally won't do anything foolish in the way of looking for Michael, or going off alone into the desert.”

”No, I won't do anything foolish. That's not in my line, is it now? I have some Lampton common sense.”

”Not about some things.”

Meg laughed. ”Wait till you know what it is like, chum.”

”Well, you'll not forget your other promise?”

Meg thought for a moment before answering and then she said emphatically, ”No, I won't forget my promise. I'm not in the least afraid that I shall be tempted to break it.”

”You have promised to go back to England if you find undeniable proof that Michael and Millicent were together in the desert.”

”Yes, I promise. I will go back to the old life, which seems like a dream.” Meg gave a little s.h.i.+ver as she visualized her old-world Suffolk home and the narrowness of her life there. ”Any old place would do, chum, to bury myself in if my heart was broken.”

CHAPTER XIII

Through a labyrinth of narrow streets, echoing with native cries and Oriental traffic, a wonderful sight and sensation to strangers unfamiliar with Cairene commercial life, Margaret Lampton found her way to ”the home of enchantment,” as she afterwards called the Iretons'

ancient mansion. It was a native house, typical and expressive of the most resplendent years of the Mameluke rule in Egypt.

A licensed guide, with a bra.s.s-lettered number on his arm, in a blue cotton jebba and a scarlet fez, had volunteered to show her the way; it would have been impossible for a stranger to find it alone. The Cairene licensed guides, although they are pests, have their uses.

As Margaret pa.s.sed under the lintel of the outer door, which led into a quiet courtyard, of Hada.s.sah Ireton's house, a Nubian servant rose from the stone _mastaba_--the guards' seat--upon which he had been lying half asleep; he conducted her with the silence of a shadow to the gate of the inner or women's courtyard. This courtyard was overlooked by the women's quarters of the house only.

Margaret rather timidly entered the second courtyard. She scarcely knew what to expect. She was certainly not prepared for the vision of beauty which she saw directly the door was opened. She had heard nothing at all of the fantastic beauty of the superb old Mameluke palaces in Cairo; she did not know that the Iretons lived in one.

A fat servant, also a Nubian, but more amply clad the guard at the outer door, rose from a wooden seat, grown grey with age. With the same silence and mystery he conducted Margaret across the courtyard.

Margaret could, of course, only glance at the bewildering beauty of her mediaeval surroundings as she followed the servant, but brief as her vision of it was, it left a never-to-be-forgotten picture in her mind.

A vision of coolness and peace, of oriel windows--chamber-windows for unreal people, jealously screened with weather-bleached _meshrahiyeh_ work--and one high balcony, the special feature of the courtyard, a dream of romantic beauty, shaded by the dark leaves of an ancient lebbek tree. It was a vision as dignified as it was touching. It was like a lost piece of a world which had pa.s.sed away, a lonely cloud which had detached itself from a world of romance and had hidden itself in the heart of a seething city of ugliness and sin.

Surprise temporarily drove from Margaret's mind the object of her visit; it was not until she was seated in the s.p.a.cious room which overlooked the courtyard, and whose front wall consisted of the _meshrahiyeh_ balcony--it was now Hada.s.sah Ireton's drawing-room--that she was brought face to face with the unusualness of her visit.

The room was beautifully cool, screened as it was by the delicate lace-work. _Meshrabiyeh_ was invented to fill two wants--to screen the windows through which women could look out, without being seen themselves, and to admit fresh air while it excluded the sun. It is a subst.i.tute for gla.s.s in a warm climate.

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