His obvious sincerity appeased her. He fetched a notebook and pencil from the pocket of his coat, and handed them to her.
“I’ll send your horse back to the hotel,” he said. “Please write a note to your friends.”
“What d’you want me to say?” she asked, taking the writing materials from him, her eyes curiously wide open, and having in them that characteristic expression of assumed and mischievous innocence.
“Say this,” he replied, and, with mock obedience, she wrote at his dictation: “Mr. Lane insists on my working. Please ’phone to my father that he has arrived, and that I will bring him to the Residency for tea. I’ll look in at the hotel in the early afternoon.”
“Anything else?” she asked with a laugh. “Won’t you send a few directions to my maid to pack my things, and order a car to take us into Cairo?”
“Yes,” he replied, without a smile. “You’d better add that.”
As she was writing he turned to the man who was holding her horse, and gave him his instructions; then, having handed him the note, he sent him galloping off.
“Now what?” asked Muriel. Unaccountably, her heart was beating fast.
“Now take your coat off, and come and help,” he said.
For a moment she hesitated, and a sensation very much like fear took hold of her; but, recollecting that he was nothing more than her father’s new diplomatic Secretary, she gave herself up to the enticement of the free and sparkling desert.