And she was so slight, so delicate, so made for rich and lovely luxury....  Looking down at her he felt a lump in his throat ... a lump of queer, choking tenderness....

He wanted to protect her, to save her, to spend himself for her....  He felt for her a reverent wonder, a stirring that was at once protective and possessive and denying of all self.

He would die to save her.  He tried to tell himself reassuringly that he had saved her....  If only he could keep her safe....

He thought of the life before her.  He thought of that family in France in whose name he had urged his interference.  That unknown Delcasse aunt who had sent out her agents for her lost heirs—­would she welcome and endow this lovely girl?

He could not doubt it....  Aimee’s youth and beauty would be treasure trove to a jaded lonely woman with money to invest in futures.  Aimee would be a belle, an heiress....

He looked down at her with a sudden darkness in his young eyes....  And still she slept, wrapped in the sorry mantle of his masquerade, the torn chiffons of her negligee fluttering over her slim, bare feet.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE TOMB OF A KING

There were several approaches to the American excavations.  McLean, on that morning after his visit from Jinny Jeffries, chose to borrow a friend’s motor and man and break the speed laws of Upper Egypt, and then shift to an agile donkey at the little village from which the gulleys ran west through the red hills into the desert.

It was a still, hot day without cloud or wind and the sun had an air of standing permanently high in the heavens, holding the day at noon.  Shimmering heat waves quivered about the base of the farther hills and veiled the desert reaches.  It was not conducive to comfort and Andrew McLean was not comfortable.  He was hot and sticky and sandy and abominably harassed.

Not a creature, as far as he could discover, had seen Jack Ryder in Cairo since the afternoon of that reception at Hamdi Bey’s.  He had not been seen at the Museum nor the banks, nor at Cook’s, nor the usual restaurants, nor at the clubs with his friends.  And the clever clerk—­with the two brothers in the bazaar—­had unearthed quite a bit of disquieting news about that reception—­disquieting, that is, to one with secret fears.

There had been a fire in the apartments of the bride of Hamdi Bey and the bride had been killed instantly—­that much was known to all the world.  The general had been distracted.  He had sat brooding beside his bride’s coffin, allowing no one, not even her father, to look upon the poor charred remains that he had placed within.  He had been a man out of his mind with grief, gnawing his nails, beating his slaves,—­Oh, assuredly, it had been a calamity of a very high order!

One of the brothers in the bazaar had himself talked with an old crone whose sister’s child was employed in the general’s kitchen, and the fourth-hand story had lost nothing on the route.