So they melted away and I descended from the landing, indignant but laughing.  No wonder that Lady Ragnall lost her temper!

Ten minutes later she arrived in the dining-room, waving a lighted ribbon that disseminated perfume.

“What on earth are you doing?” I asked.

“Fumigating the house,” she said.  “It is unnecessary as I don’t think they were infectious, but the ceremony has a moral significance—­like incense.  Anyway it relieves my feelings.”

Then she laughed and threw the remains of the ribbon into the fire, adding,

“If you say a word about those people I’ll leave the room.”

I think we had one of the jolliest breakfasts I ever remember.  To begin with we were both hungry since our miseries of the night before had prevented us from eating any dinner.  Indeed she swore that she had scarcely tasted food since Saturday.  Then we had such a lot to talk about.  With short intervals we talked all that day, either in the house or while walking through the gardens and grounds.  Passing through the latter I came to the spot on the back drive where once I had saved her from being abducted by Harut and Marut, and as I recognized it, uttered an exclamation.  She asked me why and the end of it was that I told her all that story which to this moment she had never heard, for Ragnall had thought well to keep it from her.

She listened intently, then said,

“So I owe you more than I knew.  Yet, I’m not sure, for you see I was abducted after all.  Also if I had been taken there, probably George would never have married me or seen me again, and that might have been better for him.”

“Why?” I asked.  “You were all the world to him.”

“Is any woman ever all the world to a man, Mr. Quatermain?”

I hesitated, expecting some attack.

“Don’t answer,” she went on, “it would be too long and you wouldn’t convince me who have been in the East.  However, he was all the world to me.  Therefore his welfare was what I wished and wish, and I think he would have had more of it if he had never married me.”

“Why?” I asked again.

“Because I brought him no good luck, did I?  I needn’t go through all the story as you know it.  And in the end it was through me that he was killed in Egypt.”

“Or through the goddess Isis,” I broke in rather nervously.

“Yes, the goddess Isis, a part I have played in my time, or something like it.  And he was killed in the temple of the goddess Isis.  And those papyri of which you read the translations in the museum, which were given to me in Kendah Land, seem to have come from that same temple.  And—­how about the Ivory Child?  Isis in the temple evidently held a child in her arms, but when we found her it had gone.  Supposing this child was the same as that of which I was guardian!  It might have been, since the papyri came from that temple.  What do you think?”