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“Helena and I agree better apart, my dear,” she explained frankly to Cecil. “One really can’t quarrel much in letters, but when we are together we can’t do anything else.”

This was already sufficiently obvious, and it is probable that no one, unless perhaps Mr Boleyn, was sorry when the time came for the travellers to journey to Port Said, there to resume their interrupted voyage. Lady Haigh and Cecil, with their two maids, and Dr Egerton, with his Armenian boy Hanna, made an imposing party, and excited no small amount of curiosity and speculation in the minds of the passengers on board the P. & O. boat. Lady Haigh was never a woman to do things by halves, and from the moment that she came on board she took by sheer force of character the place she felt was her right, although in the present case it was conceded to her without opposition as soon as it was known who she was.

“Have you noticed,” said Charlie Egerton to Cecil, one night in the Red Sea, “that my dear cousin is perceptibly growing taller and more imposing in appearance? Her foot is on her native heath now. This side of Suez we are under the beneficent sway of the Indian Government, and her position is assured, whereas at home she might have been anybody or nobody. You will observe the majesty of her demeanour increase continually, until, when she reaches Baghdad, you will recognise in her every gesture that she represents the Queen-Empress.”