"When you say big people in a small town do you mean her father would be a sort of country squire?"

"More probably a captain of industry," Billy smiled.

"A captain--Oh, that is one of your phrases!"

"One of our phrases," he laughed, and then parried, "I thought you were acquainted with Miss Beecher?"

"Quite slightly," said Miss Falconer in an aloof tone. "My brother came over on the same ship with her--he came to join us here."

Billy experienced a flood of mental light. The brother--at the hotel he had discovered that his name was Robert Falconer--was coming to join his elder sister and her young charge. He had come on the same steamer as Miss Beecher. Ergo, he was staying at the hotel where Miss Beecher was and not with his sister. Billy comprehended the anxiety of the lady with the Roman nose. He looked at Lady Claire with a certain sympathy.

He caught her own eyes reconnoitering, and they each looked hastily away.

Again Miss Falconer returned to her attack. "Then you really know nothing positive of Miss Beecher's family?"

"Nothing in the world," said Billy cheerfully. "But why not ask Miss Beecher?"

The lady made no reply. "Miss Beecher is a beautiful girl," said Lady Claire hastily. "She's _so_ beautiful that I suppose we are all rather curious about her--of course people _will_ ask about a girl like that!"

"Of course," said Billy, and Lady Claire, perceiving that he resented this catechism about his young countrywoman, and Miss Falconer perceiving that nothing was to be gotten out of him, the conversation was promptly turned into other channels, the vague, general channels of comment upon Cairo.

The Evershams dined alone. Alternately, from their table to the doorway went Billy's eager eyes, but no vision with shining curls and laughing eyes appeared. Evidently she had stayed to dine with whatever people she had gone to see. Robert Falconer was watching that table, too.... Perhaps she would not return till late; perhaps he would have only a tiny time with her that evening.... And he had not been able to buy out that man's berth upon the steamer....

Consomme and whitebait, _boeuf roti_ and _haricots vert_ and _creme de cerises_ succeeded one another in deepening gloom. The whole dinner over, and she had not appeared!

He went out to the lounge and smoked with violence. Presently he saw the Evershams in the doorway talking to Robert Falconer, and he jumped up and hurried to join them. As he approached he heard the word Alexandria spoken fretfully by Mrs. Eversham.

"Good evening, good evening," said Billy hurriedly to the ladies, and being a young man of simple directness, undeterred by the glacial tinge of the ladies' response--they had not forgotten his defection of the evening before when they were entertaining him so nicely--he put the question which had been tormenting him all evening, "Where is Miss Beecher to-night?"

"Alexandria," said Mrs. Eversham again, and this time there was a hint of malicious satisfaction in her voice.

"Alexandria?" Billy was incredulous. "Why I--I understood she was to go up the Nile to-morrow morning."

"She was, but she has changed her mind. She had word from some friends of hers while we were out this afternoon and she flew right off to join them."

"You mean she isn't going up the Nile at all now?"

"I haven't an idea what she is going to do. She is not in our care any longer. And I don't suppose the boat company will do anything about her stateroom at this late date--certainly she can't expect us to go to any trouble about it."

"She left us half her packing to do," Clara Eversham contributed, addressing Falconer with plaintive mien, "and her hotel bill to pay.

She is the most unexpected creature!"

Two young men silently and heartily concurred.

"What was her hurry?" Billy demanded.

"Oh, she's going camping in the desert with them--that sort of thing would fascinate her, you know. Her telegram wasn't very clear. She just sent a wire from the station, I think, or from Cook's, with some money for her bill by the boy. So careless, trusting him like that!"

"I don't suppose he brought it all," Mrs. Eversham declared. "You see, she didn't say how much she was sending--just said it was enough for her bill."

Billy looked at Falconer. He admired the stolidity of that sandy-haired young man's countenance. He envied the unrevealing blankness of his eyes.

"May I ask where she is stopping in Alexandria?" he persisted.

Mrs. Eversham shook her head. "She didn't give any address--the best hotel, I suppose, whatever that is."

"The Khedivial," Falconer supplied.

"She just said to send her things to Cook's and to write to her there and she would write when she came back. She had been expecting to meet those friends, the Maynards, later, but we had no idea that she was going to run off with them like this. It's very upsetting."

"We shall miss her," said Clara Eversham suddenly, with a note of sincerity that made Billy warm to her a trifle. So he bestirred himself getting their after dinner coffee and remembered to send Mohammed for the cream for her, and listened with a show of attention to their interminable anecdotes and corrections. But his mind was off on the way to Alexandria....

Not a word of farewell. Of course, they had not exactly arrived, in those twenty-four hours, at a correspondence stage, but still she had made a positive engagement for that evening--and she had known he was trying to buy that berth. Only that morning she had listened to his account of his endeavors with a mischievous light in her blue eyes and a prankish smile edging her pink lips ... and she might, after that, have left just a line to tell him to cancel his arrangements.... But what could he expect from such a tricksy sprite of a girl? Only twenty-seven hours before he had seen her, flagrantly tardy, nonchalantly unrepentant, first mock and then annihilate the worthy and earnest young Englishman who had endeavored to correct her ways ... He had known then the volatile stuff that she was made of--and had succ.u.mbed to it!

But he _had_ succ.u.mbed. On that point he was most disastrously certain. The memory of the young girl possessed him. Her beauty haunted him, that spring-like beauty with its enchanting youth and gaiety. And the spirit that animated that beauty, that young, blithe, innocently audacious spirit which looked out on the world with such sunnily trustful eyes, drew him with a golden cord.

He smoked many a pipe over it that night, his feet on the open window ledge, his eyes on the far-spreading flat roofs, the distant domes and minarets darkly silhouetted against the sky of softest, deepest blue. The stars were silver bright. They spangled the heaven with the radiance they never give to northern skies; they gleamed like bright, wild creatures on their unearthly revels.... It would be glorious camping in the desert on a night like this ... Heaven be praised, he had not bought that berth ... Alexandria ... the Maynards ... the desert ...

He knocked out the ashes from his last pipe and rose briskly. His decision was made, but its success was on the knees of the great G.o.d Luck.

CHAPTER VII

BILLY HAS HIS DOUBTS

The encounter in the bazaars that Thursday afternoon brought one more result to young Hill besides the bruise upon his chin and the privilege of bowing to Lady Claire and her vigilant chaperon, and the presence of Lady Claire's little handkerchief in his coat pocket.

It brought a young German, scrupulously sober, soberly apologetic, in formal state to Billy's hotel upon Friday morning, whose card announced him to be Frederick von Deigen and whose speech proclaimed him to be utterly aghast at his own untoward behavior.

"I was not myself," he owned, with a sigh and a melancholy twist of his upstanding mustaches. "I had been lunching alone--and it is bad to lunch alone when one has a sadness. One drinks--to forget.... But you are too young to understand." He waved his hand in compliment to Billy's youth, then continued, with increasing energy, "But when I find what _dummheit_ I have done--how I have so rudely addressed the young Fraulein with you, and have used my fists upon you, even to the point of hurling you upon the street--I have no words for my shame."

"Oh, it wasn't exactly a hurl," Billy easily amended. "There was a banana peel where my heel happened to be--and I wasn't half sc.r.a.pping. I could see you weren't yourself."

"Indeed no! Would I," he struck himself gloomily upon the breast, "would I intrude upon a young Fraulein, and attack her protector? It was that bottle--that last bottle.... I knew--at the time.... I offer you my apology. I can do no more--unless you would have satisfaction--no?"

"I guess I had all the satisfaction that was coming to me yesterday," said Billy. "You've got a fist like a professional. But there's no harm done.... Only you want to get over taking that last bottle and offering presents to young ladies," he concluded, with an accent of youthful severity.

The German nodded a depressed head. His melancholy, bloodshot eyes fixed themselves sadly upon Billy. "Ach, it is so," he a.s.sented meekly, "but when one has a sadness--" He sighed.

"Yes, of course, that's tough," agreed Billy sympathetically. "I hate a sadness."

"Perhaps you have known--?" The other's eyes lifted toward him, then dropped dispiritedly. "But, no, you are too young. But I--Ach!" He added in his own tongue a line of which Billy caught _geliebt_ and _gelebt_, and so nodded understandingly.