After eight hours of dreamless sleep, Irene awoke to a torpid but blissful conviction that bed is a most comfortable place when bones ache and the slightest movement is made irksome by patches of chafed skin. In fact, having buried her hands gingerly in the wealth of brown hair that streamed over the pillow, she lay and watched the white planks of the deck overhead, wondering idly what time it was. The effort to guess the hour brought her a stage nearer complete consciousness. Her first precise recollection was also pleasant. She thought of the way in which Royson had carried her in his arms not so many hours earlier, and the memory banished all others for many minutes.
If she smiled and blushed a little, it may be pleaded that she was twenty years of age, and had passed her girlhood amidst surroundings from which young men eligible to carry young ladies in their arms, or even hold them there, were rigorously excluded. Not that her grandfather was a misanthrope, but his interests were bound up so thoroughly in Egyptian research that his friends were, for the most part, elderly savants with kindred tastes. The wreck, of the Bokhara, too, with Irene's father and mother among its passengers, had helped to cut him off from the social world. When the grief of that tragedy had yielded to the passing years he hardly realized that the little child who had crept into his affections was growing up into a beautiful and light-hearted girl. Quite insensibly she assimilated herself to his hobbies and studies, became mistress of his London house and fine estate in Berkshire, and, by operation of forces more effective in their way than any Puritanical safeguards, lived apart from the gay throng in which she was eminently fitted to take a leading place.
Irene offered, then, a somewhat unusual type. While other girls might recount the number of male hearts they had subdued during the past season, Irene could state, with equal accuracy, the names of the gods of the Memphite order. Though her grandfather's wealth and the eagerness of a skilled maid compelled her to take a passing interest in fashions, she was far more devoted to variations in scarabs. Such attainments, if sedulously pursued during the succeeding decade, might have converted her into an alarmingly precise Bas Bleu! As it was, the Memphite gods smiled on her, and the scarabs might buzz off to their museums contentedly at any moment, for Irene was only waiting the advent of an undreamed-of influence into her life to develop into a tender, sympathetic, delightful womanhood.
Indeed, if Ka and Ra and beetle-headed Khepra were so important in the scheme of existence that this dainty scientist cared naught for the moth-life of society, why, then, did she blush when she remembered how closely Dick Royson had clasped her to his breast over-night? Perhaps she might have asked herself that question, only to blush more deeply in trying to answer it, had not her thoughts been distracted by the extraordinary behavior of a silk underskirt hanging on a peg at the foot of the bed. It was swinging to and fro with the regularity of a pendulum, and that which is regular in a pendulum is fantastically irregular in an underskirt. She sat up quickly, and listened. There was a swish of water outside. Now and again she heard a slight movement of the rudder chains in their boxes. Then, all aglow with wonder and excitement, she jumped out of bed and drew the curtain of one of the two tiny portholes that gave light to her cabin.
Yes, another marvel had happened. The yacht was speeding along under canvas,—was already far out at sea. Where Massowah's yellow sandspit shone yesterday were now blue wavelets dancing in the sun, and Irene was sailor enough to know that the Aphrodite was bound south.
She rang an electric bell, and her maid came.
"Yes, miss," said the girl, "we've been going since midnight. As soon as Mrs. Haxton and Baron von Kerber came on board—"
"Baron von Kerber, did you say?" broke in Irene breathlessly.
"Yes, miss. He came with Mrs. Haxton. Mind you, miss, I haven't seen him, but one of the stewards told me that the Baron went straight to Mr. Fenshawe's cabin, and the order was given to raise the anchor immediately. I'm sure they made plenty of noise. They woke me up, miss, and I'm a sound sleeper."
The maid was ready to say more, but Irene had learnt to discourage servants' gossip.