The two wise women had long since left Khargegh.

By special train, by special boat, by aid of runners, telephone and telegraph, but above all by the magic of the Sheikh el-Umbar’s name and his wife’s unlimited distribution of gold, Olivia Duchess of Longacres and her maid and Jill el-Umbar and her maid arrived at the hotel on the night of the full moon.

They would have arrived before sunset if it had not been for the mistake made about the special steamer which had kept them waiting at the quay; they would not have arrived until twenty-four hours later if they had made use of the ordinary train and boat.

“Can’t we go faster, ma’am?  Can’t we get there quicker?”

It was Maria Hobson, stolid, solid, dour, big-hearted woman with a streak of Scotch blood in her veins, who worried outwardly.  If you had watched her out of the corner of your eye you would have seen her shake her fist at the desert; if you had walked behind her on the quay you would have heard her say, with a world of entreaty in her voice, to some terrified, non-understanding fellah who quaked at the knee:  “Can’t you get a move on, somehow?  You’re only a heathen, to be sure, but if you’d heard the tone in the young lady’s voice you’d do something instead of sal-aaming.”

She said very little to her beloved mistress, but to Jill she poured out her heart, and Jill who with the intuition of a mother’s love had connected the dream with her son let her repeat her tale over and over again.

“. . .  Just as though she was standing on a precipice and frightened of falling over was her voice like, Mum, Miss Jill—­may I call you Miss Jill?  It’s more familiar-like and—­homely, and I know you will excuse me, Miss Jill, if I say that I can’t get used to you in those clothes, pretty as they are and becoming to you.  It seems to me like fancy-dress, you with a veil over your face, if you will excuse me saying so.  You are just the same to me and my lady as when you came to stay with her grace; and glad I for one shall be when I see the barouche waiting for her at Victoria, with Whippup and his powdered head on the box.  I don’t mind that young chauffeur with one leg lost in the war, but I don’t like that wicked-looking red vermilion motor-car of her grace’s, though the slum-folks do, and you should hear them cheer, Miss Jill, when it goes down Shadwell way.”

This conversation took place on the quay whilst her grace was absent, trying to still the unaccountable fear with which her heart had been filled by her maid’s dream, by talking to the little brown urchins who swarmed about her the better to view the bird.

“What do you think of them, Dekko old fellow?” She took him on her wrist, at which he spread his tail, rattled his wings, and puffed his ruff, whereupon the children fled, yelling.  “Come now, say something nice to the poor little things.  You’ve frightened them.  Ask them if the boat is ready.”