She opened more music, stared wonderingly at the unfamiliar pages, read the English translation beneath the German lines, then pushed them away, her cheeks the pinker.  They were as bad as French postcards, she thought, aghast.  Whose room was this, anyway?  Whose piano was this?  Whose was the lacy negligee she had worn and the gossamer lingerie the maid had placed in the chiffonier for her?  Was she usurping her hostess’s boudoir?

She began to walk restlessly up and down the room, feeling time interminable, hating each lagging second of delay.

Then came a tray of luncheon, and lying upon it a yellow envelope.  With an eagerness that hurt in its keenness she snatched it up and tore out the folded sheet.  Her eyes leaped down the lines.  Then slowly they followed them again: 

I think it very strange of you to leave us like that, but of course you are your own mistress.  We are sorry and hope it will soon be over and you will join us again, unless you prefer your other friends, the Maynards.  We have packed your clothes and sent them to Cook’s for your orders, and we have paid your hotel bill.  Let us know when you can join us.

MRS. EVERSHAM.

That was all.  No word of real sympathy—­no declaration of help.  Passive acceptance of her predicament—­perhaps indeed a retributive feeling of its fitness for her folly.  They were annoyed....  Packing her clothes must have been a bother—­so was paying her hotel bill.

She crumpled the telegram with an angry little hand.  Evidently they had done none of the telephoning she had begged of them.  Surely there would have been time for that, if only they had hurried a little!  She remembered with a sort of hopeless rage their maddening deliberateness....  Well, they were gone off to the Nile—­the telegram, she saw, had been sent as they were on their way to the boat—­and she had nothing more to hope from them!  But surely the other people, the consul, the ambassador, the mysterious medical authorities, would understand when they had read her letters.

She sent another note to the Captain, asking to be called when the doctor came, and then she sat down at the little white table and began again to write.

But not to Falconer.  Never would she beg of him, never, she resolved, with a tightening of her soft lips.  She would never let him know how miserable she was over this stupid scrape; when she returned to the hotel she would carry affairs with a high hand and hold forth upon the interesting quaintness of her experience and the old-world charm of her hostess.  She laughed, in angry mockery.  Never to him, after their quarrel, would she confess herself.