moustache. But his cheek-bones were high, and his eyes rather narrowly set. To-day no young Frenchman—as was the fashion ten years ago—wears a beard. Time was when the beard was carefully oiled, perfumed, trimmed and curled. But to-day the fashion in France is a hairless face—as in America and in England.

Waldron examined his companion for the hundredth time. Yes, he was a mystery. He had given the name of Pujalet to the steward, but was that his real name? Was he the son of Pujalet, the dead banker of the Rue des Capucines?

Old Gigleux often chatted with him, for were they not compatriots? But the white-headed old fellow apparently held no suspicion that he was his niece’s secret lover who had travelled those many miles from Europe in order to be near her.

The situation was not without its humours. Of all the persons on board that gay crowd returning to Cairo to spend New Year’s Day, only Hubert Waldron knew the truth. And as a diplomat he stood by and watched in silence, aware that the looker-on always sees most of the game.

He had had many amusing chats on deck and in the smoking-room with Henri Pujalet, whom he had found to be a much more cosmopolitan person than he had at first imagined. He seemed to know Europe well—even Madrid—for he spoke of certain dishes at the Lhardy and the excellence of the wines at the Tournié in the Calle Mayor, of the “Flamenco” at the Gate Nero, and the smart teas in the ideal room in the Calle de Alcata; all of which were familiar, of course, to Waldron.

Equally familiar to him was Petersburg, with Cubat’s and such-like resorts; he knew the gay Boulevard Hotel in Bucharest, and the excellence of its sterlet, the Nazionale and “Father Abraham’s” in Rome; the Hungaria in Budapest, the Adlon in Berlin, the Pera Palace in Constantinople, as indeed most of the other well-known resorts to which the constant traveller across Europe naturally drifts at one time or another.

That Henri Pujalet was a cosmopolitan was perfectly clear to his companion. Yet he was, as certainly, a man of mystery.

Hubert Waldron, a shrewd observer and a keen investigator of anything appertaining to mystery, watched him daily, and daily became more and more interested.

His suspicions were aroused that all was not quite right. Pujalet’s attitude towards Lola was quite remarkable. Not by the slightest glance or gesture did he give away his secret. To all on board he was 

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