She added as McLean was silent, “He told me that he had some engagement for that evening, so I did not begin to worry until the next day.”

“Now just how long ago was this?”

“Two days ago.  Day before yesterday afternoon.”

She looked anxiously at McLean’s face and took alarm at his careful absence of expression.

“Oh, Mr. McLean, do you think—­”

He brushed that aside.  “And where was it—­this reception?”

“At an old palace, forever away on the edge of the city.  I don’t remember the street—­we drove and I had the cab wait.  But it belonged to a Turkish general.  Hamdi Bey,” she brought out triumphantly.  “General Hamdi Bey.”

McLean did not correct her idea of the title.  His expression was more carefully non-committal than ever, while behind its quiet guard his thoughts were breaking out like a revolution.

Hamdi Bey....  A wedding reception....  The daughter of Tewfick Pasha....

In the secret depths of his soul he uttered profane and troubled words.  That French girl, again....  So Ryder had not forgotten that affair, although he had kept silent about it of late.  He had bided his time and taken that rash means of seeing the girl again—­and he had involved this unknowing young American in a risk of scandal and deceived her into believing herself responsible for this caprice while all the time she had been a mere cloak and it had been his own diabolical desire....

Miss Jeffries was surprised to see a sudden sorry softness dawn in the young man’s look upon her.  And she was surprised, too, at his next question.

“I wonder, now, if you were the young lady who took him to a masquerade ball—­some time ago?”

Lightly she acknowledged it.  “You’ll think I’m always taking him to things,” she said brightly, but McLean’s troubled gaze did not quicken with a smile.

He was experiencing a vast compassion.  She was so innocent, so unconscious of the quicksands about her....  Probably she had never heard a breath of that first adventure.

And it was this fair Christian creature whom Jack Ryder had abandoned for a veiled girl from a Turk’s harem!

McLean filled with cold, antagonistic wonder.  He forgot the lovely image of the French miniature, and remembering Tewfick’s rounded eyes and olive features he thought of the veiled girl—­most illogically, for he knew that Tewfick was not her father—­as some bold-eyed, warm-skinned image of base allure.

Sorrowfully he shook his head over his friend.  He determined to protect him and to protect this girl’s innocence of his behavior.  He would help her to save him....  She could do it yet—­if only she did not learn the truth and turn from him.  If ever she had been able to make Jack go to a masquerade—­that cursed masquerade!—­she could work other, more beneficent, miracles.

So now he asked, very cautiously, his mind on divided paths, “Do you say there was nothing to draw suspicion—­he did not talk to any one, the guests or the bride—?”