The strains of "O Terra Adio" were dying away in haunting sadness as she rose, and snatching up the ermine cloak, slipped from the box and down the promenade like a wraith.
CHAPTER VI.
A Message From Pharaoh.
On the morning following her visit to the opera, Betty sat at her desk in the library, with a copy of the Literary Digest, which had just arrived in the mail spread out before her. The waiting heap of correspondence was forgotten, and she read and reread as if hypnotized the chance advertisement which had caught her eye:
"Wanted:—Translator of Egyptian inscriptions and papyri of later dynastic periods. Scholar conversant with Mallory method preferred. Exceptionally high rates, tripling those ever previously paid in America will be given for accurate authentic work. No immediate time limit. Call office nine, National Egyptological Museum."
A gray haze of exuding frost arose from the bare dun lawns stretching before the window and the cedars drooped their branches as if weary of the long wait for spring, but she was blind to the somber prospect before her. Instead rose gorgeous pictures of the East and her vision was peopled with the glory of long-buried kings.
Her own precarious position, the inexplicable shadow which lay like a pall over the house, even the dead man upon whom she had stumbled on that never-to-be-forgotten night had faded alike from her thoughts, and her eyes glowed with an eagerness almost fanatical.
If only she dared to reply in person to the advertisement! Aside from the emolument, which might prove an asset by no means to be despised in her straitened circumstances, the work would relieve her mind from the terrific strain under which she had placed herself.
Why should she not avail herself of this opportunity to pursue a study which possessed for her an irresistible fascination? In spite of her preoccupation, time hung heavily upon her hands and she had come to dread the many hours during which she was left to her own devices with only the wretched treadmill of her thoughts to bear her company.
It might be that with the successful accomplishment of her strange mission at the opera house she would enter upon a new phase of her present situation, with exciting adventures in store for her, on like mysterious errands, but she looked forward to that contingency with no lightening of her spirit. It would be merely a part of the task which she had assumed, and was constrained to carry through.