discretion,” declared the man in a low, intense voice.

“Benissimo,” was her hurried response. “Return here in half an hour, and I will give you my answer. It is hard, cruel, inhuman of them to treat me thus! But it is, I suppose, only what I must expect. I am only a woman, and I must make the sacrifice.”

And with a wave of her small, ungloved hand she dismissed him, and took a path which led through the public garden back to the hotel by a shorter cut.

Meanwhile Waldron strode on past the railway station to the quay, glanced at his watch, and then, half an hour later, after he had dispatched his telegram he was lurking in the shadows at that same spot.

He watched Lola hand a letter to the stranger, and wish him “Addio e buon viaggio!”

Then he followed the bearded man down to the station, where, from a European official of whom he made a confidential inquiry, he learnt that the stranger had arrived in Assouan from Cairo only two hours before, bearing a return ticket to Europe by the mail route via Port Said and Brindisi.

With curiosity he watched the Italian leave by the mail for Cairo ten minutes later, and then turned away and retraced his steps to the Cataract Hotel, plunged deep in thought.

There was a mystery somewhere—a strange and very grave mystery.

What could be that message of such extreme importance and secrecy that it could not be trusted to the post?

Who was old Gigleux of whom Mademoiselle Duprez went in such fear? Was she really what she represented herself to be?

No. He felt somehow assured that all was not as it should be. A mystery surrounded both uncle and niece, while the angular Miss Lambert remained as silent and impenetrable as the sphinx.

Diplomat and man of the world as was Hubert Waldron—a man who had run the whole gamut of life in the gay centres of Europe—he was naturally suspicious, for the incident of that night seemed inexplicable.

Something most secret and important must be in progress to necessitate the travelling of a special messenger from Europe far away into Upper Egypt, merely to deliver a letter and obtain a response.

“Yes,” he murmured to himself as he passed through the portals of the hotel, 

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