"Do you really love me?" she demanded earnestly.
"With all my soul, I swear to you," he replied, staggered by the abrupt change in her manner.
"Then don't make it any harder for me," she said. "You know that I could not do what you ask. Please, please be fair with me. I—I can't even jest about it. It is too much to ask of me," she went on with a strange firmness in her voice. "It would require centuries to make me forget that I am a princess, just as centuries were taken up in creating me what I am. I am no better than you, dear, but—but—you understand?" She said it so pleadingly, so hopelessly that he understood what it was that she could not say to him. "We seldom if ever marry the men whom God has made for us to love."
He lifted her hands to his breast and held them there. "If you will just go on loving me, I'll some day make you forget you're a princess." She smiled and shook her head. Her hair gleamed red and bronze in the kindly light; a soft perfume came up to his nostrils.
The next day three of the native servants became violently ill, seized by the most appalling convulsions. At first, a thrill of horror ran through the château. The plague! The plague in reality! Faces blanched white with dread, hearts turned cold and sank like lead; a hundred eyes looked out to sea with the last gleam of hope in their depths.
But these fears were quickly dissipated. Baillo and the other natives unhesitatingly announced that the men were not afflicted with the "fatal sickness." As if to bear out these positive assertions, the sufferers soon began to mend. By nightfall they were fairly well recovered. The mysterious seizure, however, was unexplained. Chase alone divined the cause. He brooded darkly over the prospect that suddenly had presented itself to his comprehension. Poison! He was sure of it! But who the poisoner?
All previous perils and all that the future seemed to promise were forgotten in the startling discovery that came with the fall of night. The first disclosures were succeeded by a frantic but ineffectual search throughout the grounds; the château was ransacked from top to bottom.
Lady Deppingham and Robert Browne were missing! They had disappeared as if swallowed by the earth itself!
Neenah, the wife of Selim, was the last of those in the château to see the heirs. When the sun was low in the west, she observed them strolling leisurely along the outer edge of the moat. They crossed the swift torrent by the narrow bridge at the base of the cliff and stopped below the mouth of the cavern which blew its cool breath out upon the hanging garden. Later on, she saw them climb the staunch ladder and stand in the black opening, apparently enjoying the cooling wind that came from the damp bowels of the mountain. Her attention was called elsewhere, and that was the last glimpse she had of the two people about whom centred the struggle for untold riches.