Jack Wetherbourne was of the same comfortable and honest type, and they loved each other in a tailor-made way; one of those tailor-mades of the best tweed, which, cut without distinctive style, is warranted with an occasional visit to the cleaners to last out its wearer; a garment you can always reply on, and be sure of finding ready for use, no matter how long you have kept it hidden in your old oak chest, or your three-ply wardrobe, or whatever kind of cupboard you may have managed to make out of your life.  Although no word of love had ever passed between them, you would have sworn they had been married for years, as they sat on each side of the fire; Mary in a black demi-toilette, cut low at the neck, which does not mean decollete by any means, but which does invariably spell dowdiness, and Jack Wetherbourne with his chin in his hand, and a distinct frown on his usually undisturbed countenance.

A great fire crackled in the old-fashioned grate, the flames jumping from one bit of wood to another, throwing shadows through the comfortable room, and drawing dull lustre from the highly polished floor and Jacobean furniture.  It was an extraordinarily restful room for a woman, for with the exception of a few hunting pictures in heavy frames on the wall, a few hunting trophies on solid tables, some books and a big box of chocolates, there were no feminine fripperies, no photographs, nothing with a ribbon attachment, no bits of silver and egg-shell china.

Oh!  But the room was typical of the Honourable Mary Bingham, into whose capable hands had slipped the reins controlling the big estate bounded on one side by that of the man opposite her.

“There is only one more thing I can suggest,” said the deep, clear voice, “and that is that you go over to Egypt yourself.  Who knows if you might not pick up a clue.  Detectives have failed, though I think we made a mistake in employing English ones, they hardly seem tactful or subtle enough for the East.”

Certainly one would have hardly applied either adjective to Detective John Gibbs, who, bull-necked and blustering, had pushed and bullied his way through Egypt’s principal cities in search of Jill.

“How like Jill not to have sent us a line,” remarked Jack Wetherbourne for the hundredth time as he lit a cigarette.

“Oh, but as I have said before, she may have had sunstroke, and lost her memory, or have been stolen and put away in a harem.  She’s not dead, that’s certain, because she had her hand told before she left on her last trip, and she’s to live to over eighty.”

“That’s splendid,” was Wetherbourne’s serious answer to a serious statement, as he rose on the entry of Lady Bingham, who, having at the same moment finished her knitting wool and the short commons of consecutive thought of which she was capable, had meandered in on gossip bent, looking quickly and furtively from one to the other for signs of an understanding which would join the estates in matrimony, a pact upon which her heart was set.  And seeing none, she sat down with an irritated rustle, which gathered in intensity until it developed into a storm of expostulating petulance when she heard of the proposed programme.