"Thank God!" cried Biddy, as a slim figure in a loose white robe framed itself in the doorway.
With a sob, Mabel ran toward them, both hands held out, and in an instant she was being hugged and kissed and cooed over.
"You've found me—you've come!" she cried. "I never dared think you would, when he rushed me away from Asiut. He said he would keep me here all the rest of my life, to punish me for complaining to you."
"But how did he know?" Monny asked. "Did your sister-in-law tell him about the letter?"
"I don't think so, unless he has made her confess. It was like this: He was coming to his place here on business. I felt so thankful. It seemed providential he should be away then, just when you were starting up Nile. I was almost happy that morning, when suddenly he appeared again and I was ordered to put on a habberah and yashmak, and travel with him. Yeena, the woman who acts as my maid, had to get ready in a hurry, too. The chief eunuch, a hateful hypocritical wretch, followed. Some clothes have been sent to me since, but not many. At first I couldn't guess what had happened, and he was in such a fiendish temper I daren't ask questions. It wasn't till after we arrived that he explained. I'm sure he took pleasure in hurting me. He said that he left home early the morning he was going to Luxor, because he meant to stop and make a business call on the way to the depot, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to rush home and fetch me as he did, and still be in time to catch his train after the warning. It was some dragoman you employed in Cairo, he told me, who had seen us getting off the Laconia, and who ran after his carriage in the street, in Asiut. The wicked creature warned him that you were all there, and that he'd heard you say something which sounded as if there were a plot to get at me. Just at that minute, by the worst of luck, Mr. Sheridan passed. You know how foolish and cruel he was about Mr. Sheridan on the ship. Well, he hadn't forgotten. So he turned round and almost snatched me out of the house, rather than I should be left in Asiut with him away."
"This is exactly what we thought must have happened!" exclaimed Monny. "That beast, Bedr! And to think that Rachel and I wasted our time trying to convert him! How I wish I hadn't let Aunt Clara engage him at Alexandria! She thought he'd come from a man with her favourite name, Antony: but she wouldn't have insisted if I hadn't encouraged her. I feel as if this trouble were partly my fault. And if I hadn't been thoughtless enough at Asiut to blurt out your husband's name—."
"You're not to blame for anything, dearest," Biddy tried to comfort her. "It was your unfailing resolve to help, which has brought us here."
"You're both my good angels," said Mabel, "Oh, it's heavenly to see you. But I can't understand why I'm allowed to, after all the threats and punishments. I'm afraid I shall be made to pay somehow. He loves to torture me—and he knows how. I believe he hates me, now he's begun to realize that I'd give anything to leave him, that I don't consider myself his wife."
"If he hates you, why isn't he willing to let you go?" Monny questioned her.
"Partly because he's very vain, and it would humiliate him. Partly because he has no son yet, only that horrid little brown girl; and he's set his heart on a boy who's to possess all the qualities and strength of the West. No, he won't let me go!"