He rose and smiled as Waldron entered, and the latter instantly recognised him as the secret lover—the man who had travelled with them down the Nile, and whose attitude towards Lola had so completely disarmed all suspicion.
The two men lifted hats to each other in the foreign manner, and then Hubert exclaimed with a pleasant smile:
“This is a strange renewal of our acquaintance, M’sieur Pujalet, is it not?”
“Hush?” exclaimed the other warningly. “Not Pujalet here—Petrovitch, if you please!” and a mysterious expression crossed his dark, rather handsome, features.
“As you wish, of course,” replied Waldron with a bright laugh. “You, of course, know the object of my mission? The—”
He hesitated, for he was naturally cautious, and it had suddenly occurred to him at that second that this Frenchman was, no doubt, in ignorance of the true station of the woman he loved, just as he himself had been. So the word “Princess” died from his lips.
“Mademoiselle asked you to give me a letter, did she not?” said the man politely in French. “I am sure, M’sieur Waldron, I do not know how to thank you sufficiently for making this long journey in order to meet me.”
“No thanks are necessary,” the other replied. “I am simply Mam’zelle’s messenger,” he laughed, producing the letter from his pocket-book and handing it to him.
“Ah! but this is really a great service you have done both of us,” he declared earnestly. “One that I fear I shall never be able to repay,” he declared, taking the letter in his eager hands.
Waldron, watching keenly, saw that the man’s fingers trembled visibly. That letter contained some message of greatest import to him, without a doubt. Yet he held it unopened—not daring, it seemed, to break the seal and learn the truth.