Benifett Bindane was seated on the front verandah of the Residency one afternoon, when Lord Barthampton drove up to the door in his high dogcart. He rose from his chair, and going to the steps, shook hands with the younger man somewhat less limply than was his wont.

“Is Lady Muriel in?” asked the visitor.

Mr. Bindane shook his head. “I’m afraid not; but I think she’ll be home to tea. Come in and have a drink.”

He led him into the library, and rang the bell. “What will you have?” he asked. “A whiskey and soda?”

“Thanks,” Lord Barthampton replied. “I’ve given up the temperance stunt. I think one needs something with a punch in it now that the weather’s getting hot.”

A servant entered the room, and Mr. Bindane, playing the host with relish, ordered the refreshments.

Charles Barthampton had seen Muriel more than once since her return from the desert, and now he had come with the determination to make her a proposal of marriage. He was nervous, therefore, and soon he was helping himself liberally from the decanter and with marked moderation from the syphon. While doing so he thought he observed the older man’s eye upon him, and felt that candour would not here come amiss.

“I’m fortifying myself,” he laughed, holding up his glass. “Fact is, I’m going to pop the question this afternoon.”

Mr. Bindane nodded slowly, with seeming abstraction, and his lordship decided that a little drama ought to be added to his words.

“Yes,” he said, bracing his shoulders bravely, “this suspense is too much for me; so I’m going to rattle the dice with Fate, and win all or lose all at a single throw. What d’you think of my chances?”

“Not much,” replied Mr. Bindane, gloomily. “Lady Muriel is a difficult sort of girl. Still, she may be suffering from a reaction: you may catch her on the rebound.”

The words slipped from him without intention; but as soon as they were spoken he realized that he would either have to explain them or cover them up as best he could.

“How d’you mean?” came the inevitable question, and Mr. Bindane’s brains were immediately set rapidly to work. He knew that Lord Barthampton was running after the girl’s fortune: such a chase seemed a very natural thing to his business mind; and he did not suppose that the suitor would be deterred by hearing that the lady’s hand had already been given temporarily to another.

“Well,” he replied, “you know, of course, that she was by way of being in love with your cousin a short time ago.”

His visitor scowled. “No, I didn’t know that,” he muttered. “Confound the fellow!—he’s always getting in my way. I wish he’d stay in the desert, and not come back.”

“Yes, so do I,” Mr. Bindane remarked. “I want him to live out there, and manage this Company I’m trying to launch. Frankly, that is why I wish you success. At present it is Lady Muriel who attracts him to Cairo; and if by any chance she should marry him, my plans would be spoilt.”

“Oh, I see,” said the other, a look of cunning coming into his red face. “So we both want the same thing.”

“Yes,” replied Mr. Bindane. The conspiracy interested him, the more so because he felt that he was acting in the best interests of Daniel, for whom he had conceived an unbounded admiration. He thought that he was wasted at the Residency: there was no money in his present work, whereas, if he entered the proposed Company’s employment, he might rise to great wealth. Nor would he ever be happy in Cairo, certainly not if he were tied to Lady Muriel: she was not the right wife for him. She was too flighty, and this escapade of hers in the desert stamped her as a woman of loose morals, who would bring only sorrow to a man of Daniel Lane’s temperament.

Lord Barthampton leaned forward. “Did she see much of him in the Oases?” he asked.

Mr. Bindane hesitated. He did not like to give the secret away; yet he felt that if this burly and rather unscrupulous young man were in possession of the facts, he might terrorize Lady Muriel into marrying him. Then Cairo would cease to have any attraction for Daniel Lane. “She saw a great deal of him,” he replied at length.

“Why, was he with your party?”

Mr. Bindane’s lips moved flabbily, but he did not speak.

“I thought you told me the other day that he wasn’t with you,” Lord Barthampton added.

“Yes, that’s so,” the other answered. “He wasn’t.”

His visitor got up suddenly from his chair. “Do you mean that she was with him?” he asked, incredulously.

“That is a secret,” Mr. Bindane replied, a little scared, but at the same time calming himself with the assurance that he was acting for the best.

Lord Barthampton paced the floor, chewing his lips, his heavy brows knitted. “I see,” he said, at length. “And you think that it will help me if I hold this piece of information over her head.”

Mr. Bindane’s blank expression indicated that nothing of the kind had entered his head—in fact, that nothing of any kind had ever entered it. “You could have heard it from the natives,” he said. “They all know she was at El HamrÂn while we went north. If I hadn’t let it slip out like this, no doubt you would have heard it from somebody else in time.”

“No doubt,” the other answered, and he drained his glass once more.

Benifett Bindane also rose from his chair. He was alarmed, and the qualms of conscience were upon him. “Of course it was just an escapade,” he murmured. “I don’t suppose there was anything wrong in it.”

“Well, I won’t use the information, unless I’ve got to,” said Lord Barthampton.

As they issued from the library, they heard the sound of an automobile driving up to the door. “That’s probably her,” Mr. Bindane remarked. “You’d better go and wait in the drawing-room, and I’ll make myself scarce.”

He patted the young man on the shoulders and hurried up the stairs to his room, while Charles Barthampton, nervously tidying himself, went into the drawing-room, where a footman was arranging the tea-table.

He had not long to wait. In a few minutes Muriel entered, and, seeing him, held out her hand.

“Hullo!” she said. “You here again?”

“I don’t seem to be able to keep away from you for long,” he sighed. “Can I see you alone?”

Muriel glanced at him quickly. There was an expression of ludicrous agony upon his face, and she knew full well what he had come to say to her. “Let’s have tea, first,” she answered. “It will fortify us.”

He stared anxiously at her, but all further preliminary remarks were checked by the entrance of Kate Bindane; and soon two or three callers were ushered in.

It was a long time before he managed successfully to outstay the other visitors; but at length he found himself alone with Muriel. The removal of the tea-tray caused another interruption; and he refrained with difficulty from cursing aloud when the footman again entered to switch on the lights.

At last, however, the moment for his declaration arrived, and Muriel settled herself down upon the cushions of the sofa to hear him, as though she were preparing to listen to a recital upon the grand piano. “Now tell me,” she said, “what it is that you want to say to me.”

He was standing in front of her, the fingers of his hand scratching his ear. He cleared his throat. “Well, it’s like this,” he began. “Ever since I’ve known you I’ve felt that there was something lacking in my life....”

“I was wondering how you’d begin,” she said, interrupting him.

He flushed, and hastened on with his prepared speech. “Even soldiers, you know, long for the comforts of home. I suppose every Englishman likes to think of his own fireside....”

“Not in this weather, surely,” she put in, again interrupting him.

He hurried on. “... With the woman he loves, seated before him, after the day’s toil is over.”

“Are you proposing to me?” she asked, wishing mercifully to cut him short.

“Well, yes, I am,” he answered, with a deep sigh. “Ah, don’t be cruel to me. You know that I love you. I’m quite well off: I can give you a fairly comfortable time of it.”

“Yes, but they say you have led a very wild life,” she told him. “You said yourself that you drank.”

“I’ve sown my wild oats, little woman,” he sighed.

“But drink is such a dreadful thing,” she murmured. “I wonder your conscience hasn’t pricked you. Or are you one of those people who have no conscience, only a religion?”

Without waiting to reply he returned to the speech which he had memorized, and drew a picture of his English home: the snow on the ground at NoËl, the bells of the little church ringing, the Yule log, and his tenants singing carols to them as they dined in the great hall. It reminded Muriel of a Christmas-card—something with sparkling stuff powdered over it, and “Hark, the herald angels sing” printed in the corner.

Lord Barthampton, however, was very much touched by his own eloquence; and, coming close to her, he held out his hands. “Will you?” he said, brokenly.

“I must have time to think,” she answered. “This is so sudden.” Then, with deep seriousness, she added: “Yes, I want to think it over.”

“Well, I’m going off to the Fayoum tomorrow to shoot,” he told her. “May I come for my answer in three days from now?”

“Very well,” she replied.

He seized her hand in his, and pressed it fervently to his lips. Then, as though overcome with emotion, he whispered, “God bless you, little woman,” and, turning, walked slowly out of the room.