“I couldn’t help noticing that,” said the Doctor, emphatically, “for I have never seen anything more exquisite than the way they waltz together. Physically, they seem made for one another.”
Muriel laughed disdainfully.
“You had better tell Mr. Denzil Murray that; he is in a bad enough humor now, and that remark of yours wouldn’t improve it, I can tell you!”
She broke off abruptly, as a slim, fair girl, dressed as a Greek vestal in white, with a chaplet of silver myrtle-leaves round her hair, suddenly approached and touched Dr. Dean on the arm.
“Can I speak to you a moment?” she asked.
“My dear Miss Murray! Of course!” and the Doctor turned to her at once. “What is it?”
She paced with him a few steps in silence, while Muriel Chetwynd Lyle moved languidly away from the terrace and re-entered the ball-room.
“What is it?” repeated Dr. Dean. “You seem distressed; come, tell me all about it!”
Helen Murray lifted her eyes—the soft, violet-gray eyes that Lord Fulkeward had said he admired—suffused with tears, and fixed them on the old man’s face.
“I wish,” she said—“I wish we had never come to Egypt! I feel as if some great misfortune were going to happen to us; I do, indeed! Oh, Dr. Dean, have you watched my brother this evening?”