His name was Henri Pujalet, and he was from Paris. His father, Henri Pujalet, the well-known banker of the Rue des Capucines, had died two years before, leaving to his eldest son his great wealth. That was all that was known of him.
Only Hubert Waldron knew the truth—the secret of Lola’s love.
“Ah, my dear friend!” he cried in his enthusiastic French way as he approached the Englishman. “Well—how goes it?”
“Very well, thanks,” responded the diplomat in French, for truth to tell he had cultivated the stranger’s acquaintance and had watched with amused curiosity the subtle glances which Lola sometimes cast towards him.
The secret lover sank into a chair at the diplomat’s side and slowly lit a cigarette.
He was a good-looking—even handsome—man, with refined and regular features, a smiling, complacent expression, and a small, well-trimmed moustache. But his cheek-bones were high, and his eyes rather narrowly set. To-day no young Frenchman—as was the fashion ten years ago—wears a beard. Time was when the beard was carefully oiled, perfumed, trimmed and curled. But to-day the fashion in France is a hairless face—as in America and in England.
Waldron examined his companion for the hundredth time. Yes, he was a mystery. He had given the name of Pujalet to the steward, but was that his real name? Was he the son of Pujalet, the dead banker of the Rue des Capucines?
Old Gigleux often chatted with him, for were they not compatriots? But the white-headed old fellow apparently held no suspicion that he was his niece’s secret lover who had travelled those many miles from Europe in order to be near her.
The situation was not without its humours. Of all the persons on board that gay crowd returning to Cairo to spend New Year’s Day, only Hubert Waldron knew the truth. And as a diplomat he stood by and watched in silence, aware that the looker-on always sees most of the game.
He had had many amusing chats on deck and in the smoking-room with Henri Pujalet, whom he had found to be a much more cosmopolitan person than he had at first imagined. He seemed to know Europe well—even Madrid—for he spoke of certain dishes at the Lhardy and the excellence of the wines at the Tournié in the Calle Mayor, of the “Flamenco” at the Gate Nero, and the smart teas in the ideal room in the Calle de Alcata; all of which were familiar, of course, to Waldron.