"My name is Shaw—Betty Shaw," she stammered, adding with a sudden inspiration: "I live at 160 Wakefield Avenue. Have you any special instructions for me, Mr. Ross?"
"None. I will leave the work entirely in your hands. You say you will require a few days in which to complete it. Can you bring it here to me by Tuesday afternoon, at this time?"
"I will try." Betty flushed behind her veil. "My time is not absolutely my own, so I cannot make a definite appointment, but I shall make every effort to be here."
"There will be more work when this is finished, you know; inscriptions from tombs and that sort of thing," he added, as if on a sudden inspiration. "By the way, have you done any translating from the modern languages—French, German?"
Betty shook her head, and although the young man waited, she vouchsafed no further response.
"Well, we are in no hurry for this." He opened the door for her at last and held out his hand smilingly. "We only want to file the translations before the originals are placed on exhibition. Good afternoon, Miss Shaw."
Betty hurried from the museum, now grim and shadowy in the gathering dusk and started south toward Wakefield Avenue with the precious transcript clasped tightly in her muff. Late as it was she felt that she must arrange to have her change of address concealed should the exceedingly frank young man with the laughing eyes attempt to communicate with her. His personality had impressed her so strongly that the oddity of the whole interview did not present itself to her mind. If the translations to be placed on record in a National museum were left to the discretion of a young man who was avowedly ignorant of the work, it was a proceeding which aroused no suspicion in her mind. She knew nothing of the directorship of similar institutions in America, and gave it no thought. Her chief concern was that her subterfuge should not be discovered.
The work itself, fascinating though it would prove, shrunk to insignificance beside the interest the strange young man had aroused in her. Isolated as was her voluntarily assumed position, hedged in by mystery and distrust and even danger, the candid, disinterested friendliness of his attitude had made an appeal to which her lonely spirit responded joyously. The crafty, scheming expression which sometimes hardened her face was gone as if it had never existed, and her eyes glowed with a new unconscious happiness as she turned the corner of Wakefield Avenue, and ran lightly up the dingy steps of the once familiar house.
Meanwhile, the young man upon whom her thoughts were centered had also left the museum and was hastening across the park as fast as a taxi could carry him. Blue eyes, brown hair, education, refinement, youth; every attribute tallied with the rather vague description furnished to him, and the knowledge of Egyptology which the girl had displayed, unless it were the most improbable of coincidences, seemed the last detail needed to prove the identification complete.
And yet his client had made no mention of the one salient point which would render the girl who had just left his presence distinctive in a multitude; the strange scar or birthmark, like a clutching hand upon her cheek.