“What about your soldiering?” asked Hope, rather, surprised at this extended tour being arranged.

“Oh, my husband has left the army,” pouted Inez.  “His duties kept him away from me nearly all the day, and I grew weary of being left alone.”

“So you see, Mrs. Hope,” laughed Random gayly, “that I have had to succumb to my fireside tyrant.  We shall go and see this fairy city and then return to my home in Oxfordshire.  There Inez will settle down as a real English wife and I’ll turn a country squire.  So, after all our troubles, peace will come.”

“And as you will not come to my country,” said Lady Random to her hostess, “you cannot refuse to visit Frank and myself at the Grange.  We have had so much trouble together that we cannot lose sight of each other.”

“No,” said Lucy, kissing her.  “We will come to Oxfordshire.”

So it was arranged, and the next day Mr. and Mrs. Hope went over to Monte Carlo to see the last of Sir Frank and his wife.  They stood on the heights watching the pretty little steamer making for South America.  Archie noticed that his wife’s face was somewhat sad.

“Are you sorry we did not go, sweetheart?”

“No,” she replied, placing her arm within his own.  “I only want to be with you.”

“That is all right.”  He patted her hand.  “Now that we have sold all the furniture in the Pyramids, and have got rid of the lease, there will be nothing to remind you of the green mummy.”

“Yet I can’t help thinking of my unfortunate step-father, and of poor Mrs. Jasher, and of Sidney Bolton.  Oh, Archie, little as we can afford it, I am glad that we allow Mrs. Bolton a small sum a year.  After all, it was through my step-father that her son met with his death.”

“I don’t quite agree with you, dear.  Cockatoo’s innate savagery was the cause, as Professor Braddock did not intend or desire murder.  But there, dear, do not think any more about these dismal things.  Dream of the time when I shall be the president of the Royal Academy, and you my lady.”

“I am your lady now.  But,” added Lucy, perhaps from an association of ideas of color and the Academy, “I shall hate green for the rest of my life.”

“That’s unlucky, considering it is Nature’s color.  My dear, in a year or two this tragedy, or rather the three tragedies, will seem like a dream.  I won’t listen to another word now.  The green mummy has passed out of our lives and has taken its bad luck with it.”

“Amen, so be it,” said Lucy Hope, and the happy couple went home, leaving all their sorrows behind them, while the smoke of the steamer faded on the horizon.