"If Mrs. Harlow could hear you calling her old!" gurgled Biddy.
"Well, she is old. And she's perfectly horrid, much more horrid even than Miss Hassett-Bean; so I'd rather give my suite to her and her husband than any one else. Biddy and Rachel are together, and Aunt Clara is alone. I'm robbing no one but myself."
"How do you know Antoun Effendi thinks you selfish and obstinate?" I inquired. "Surely he wasn't rude enough to say so?"
"He was indeed, the day I would have the coastguard camel, and he came after me when it ran away," she confessed. "And you're not to tell him about the suite. I didn't give it up to please him."
"I thought you did," I ventured, "in order that Egyptian princes shouldn't do injustice to American girls?"
"I meant," she explained hastily, "that I like to know they're wrong about us. And now what was it that Biddy and you wanted to say? Oh, poor Mabel's letter! How thankful I am to get it! I've been wondering if I dared write, and thinking of all sorts of desperate plans. But, Biddy thought we must wait till Wretched was off his guard. You see, we shall have to rescue her when we get to Asiut."
I would have answered, but a look from Biddy enjoined silence. And so we were in touch with the "Ship's Mystery" again! I took the envelope, which was addressed to Miss Gilder in a distinctively American handwriting, strange to see coming from an Egyptian harem.
The letter began abruptly, and showed signs of haste:
"You were so good, I know I can appeal to you, but I'm not sure if there's any way to help me. I began to be frightened on the ship, when he behaved so queerly, just because I talked about the most ordinary things to one or two men. He made me stay in my cabin—but you'll remember that. Already it's like ages ago! I tell myself now that I was almost happy then. At least, I believed I was his wife, and that it was better than being poor, and a governess to hateful French children in Paris. He was kind, too—he seemed to love me; and I thought it was like living in a romance to marry a Turk. He swore he'd never loved any one except me, that he'd never been married, and that he wouldn't try to convert me or shut me up like Turkish women. But everything was untrue and different from what he said. I hardly know how to tell you, for you will think it horrible, yet I must tell. When I came here, I found he had a wife already, and a perfectly fiendish little girl. It is legal in this dreadful country to have four wives, but I don't care about the law. I want to get away. I've been cheated. This isn't marriage! I don't know what will become of me, for I haven't any money, but I'd rather starve than stay. I heard Mr. Sheridan say on board ship that it was easy to get a divorce in Egypt or Turkey. Maybe he meant me to hear, thinking some day I might be glad to know. But I can't get a divorce while I'm shut up in this house and watched. Now, he suspects I want to leave him (since a scene we had about the wife), and he won't let me go out, even into the garden. You are my only hope. You'll wonder why I don't try appealing to the American Consul here, instead of to you. I suppose there must be a consul—Asiut seems a big, important town. I'll tell you why I don't. For one thing, there mayn't be a consul. For another thing, the woman who has promised to post this wouldn't do so if she guessed I was writing against my husband, who is her brother-in-law, and she would guess if she saw an envelope addressed to a consul, although she knows scarcely any English. I have to talk to her in French. He thinks she is devoted to him, and that she's explaining the Mussulman religion and ideas of a woman's life to me, or he wouldn't let her come. It's true, she is loyal to him, in a way. She wouldn't help me to escape. But I think women in the harems like to have secrets with each other, which they hide from their men. I've told her about you, how pretty you are, and a great heiress and she's so interested, she's dying to see you. She hopes, if she posts this letter, that you will call on me on your way up the Nile. She can perhaps find out what day your boat is to arrive, through her husband, and then she'll try to come to our house on the chance of meeting you. I'm almost sure she'll keep her promise and post this letter. If not —if he sees it, maybe he will kill me. I believe now he would do anything. But I must run the risk. Do come. Do think of some way to help.
"MABEL.