Yet Waldron had heard quite a different story from her own lips while they had been seated together on deck the previous evening drinking coffee.
“Ah?” she had sighed, “if I were only wealthy like the several other girls of this party, it would be different. Perhaps I could break away from uncle, and remain independent. But, alas! I cannot. I owe everything to him—I am dependent upon him for all I have.”
This surprised Hubert considerably. Hitherto he had believed her to be the daughter of a wealthy man, because Miss Lambert showed her such marked deference. But such apparently was not the fact. Indeed she had declared later on to Waldron that she was very poor, and to her eccentric old uncle she was indebted for everything she received.
Hers was a curious, complex character. Sometimes she would sit and chat and flirt violently with him—for by her woman’s intuition she knew full well that he admired her greatly—while at others she would scarcely utter a word to him.
Hubert Waldron detested old Gigleux. Even though he sat chatting and laughing with him that morning, he held him in supreme contempt for his constant espionage upon his niece. The old fellow seemed ubiquitous. He turned up in every corner of the steamer, always feigning to take no notice of his niece’s constant companionship with the diplomat, and yet his sharp, shrewd eyes took in everything.
On more than one occasion the Englishman was upon the point of demanding outright why that irritating observation was so constantly kept, nevertheless with a diplomat’s discretion, he realised that a judicious silence was best.
That long, blazing day passed slowly, till at last the sun sank westward over the desert in a flame of green and gold. Then the thirty or so passengers stood upon the deck waiting in patience till, suddenly rounding the sharp bend of the river, they saw upon the right—carved in the high, sandstone cliff—the greatest and most wonderful sight in all Nubia.
Lola was at the moment leaning over the rail, while Waldron stood idly smoking at her side.
“See!” he cried suddenly. “Over there! Those four colossal seated figures guarding the entrance of the temple which faces the sunrise. That is Abu Simbel.”
“How perfectly marvellous!” gasped the girl, astounded at the wonderful monument of Rameses the Great.