It was all plain now. The man who had been marked out as Lola’s husband she hated, because of her secret love for that young Frenchman in whose arms she now stood clasped.
He was telling her how he had left Brindisi three weeks before, and going down the Red Sea had landed at Port Sudan, afterwards taking sail to Khartoum and then post-haste across the desert to Haifa.
“Had I not caught the coasting steamer I could not have reached here until you had left,” he added.
“Yes, Henri. But you must be most careful,” she urged. “My uncle must never suspect—he must never dream the truth.”
“I know, darling. If I travel back to Cairo with you I will exercise the utmost discretion, never fear.”
“Neither by word nor by look must the truth ever be betrayed,” she said. “Remember, Henri, my whole future is in your hands.”
“Can I ever forget that, my darling?” he cried, kissing her with all the frantically amorous passion of a Frenchman.
“It is dangerous,” she declared. “Too dangerous, I fear. Gigleux is ubiquitous.”
“He always is. But leave it all to me,” the man hastened to assure her, holding her ungloved hand and raising it fervently to his lips. “I shall join your steamer as an ordinary passenger just before you sail.”
“But you must avoid me. Promise me to do that?” she implored in a low, earnest tone.