A great fire crackled in the old-fashioned grate, the flames jumping from one bit of wood to another, throwing shadows through the comfortable room, and drawing dull lustre from the highly polished floor and Jacobean furniture. It was an extraordinarily restful room for a woman, for with the exception of a few hunting pictures in heavy frames on the wall, a few hunting trophies on solid tables, some books and a big box of chocolates, there were no feminine fripperies, no photographs, nothing with a ribbon attachment, no bits of silver and egg-shell china.
Oh! But the room was typical of the Honourable Mary Bingham, into whose capable hands had slipped the reins controlling the big estate bounded on one side by that of the man opposite her.
"There is only one more thing I can suggest," said the deep, clear voice, "and that is that you go over to Egypt yourself. Who knows if you might not pick up a clue. Detectives have failed, though I think we made a mistake in employing English ones, they hardly seem tactful or subtle enough for the East."
Certainly one would have hardly applied either adjective to Detective John Gibbs, who, bull-necked and blustering, had pushed and bullied his way through Egypt's principal cities in search of Jill.
"How like Jill not to have sent us a line," remarked Jack Wetherbourne for the hundredth time as he lit a cigarette.
"Oh, but as I have said before, she may have had sunstroke, and lost her memory, or have been stolen and put away in a harem. She's not dead, that's certain, because she had her hand told before she left on her last trip, and she's to live to over eighty."
"That's splendid," was Wetherbourne's serious answer to a serious statement, as he rose on the entry of Lady Bingham, who, having at the same moment finished her knitting wool and the short commons of consecutive thought of which she was capable, had meandered in on gossip bent, looking quickly and furtively from one to the other for signs of an understanding which would join the estates in matrimony, a pact upon which her heart was set. And seeing none, she sat down with an irritated rustle, which gathered in intensity until it developed into a storm of expostulating petulance when she heard of the proposed programme.
On the stroke of eleven Mary got up and walked down the broad staircase, and through the great hall, and out on to the steps beside the very splendid man beside her, and they stood under the moon, whilst a nightingale bubbled for a moment, and yet they were silent.
"Dear old girl," said Jack Wetherbourne, as he pushed open the little gate in the wall which divided their lands, and waved his hand in the direction of the old Tudor house.
"Dear old Jack," murmured Mary as her capable hand reached for a chocolate as she sat on the window-seat and waited until she heard the faint click of the gate, upon which she waved her handkerchief.