It will not do to leave anything to the last!" Margaret must have had a suspicion of what was coming, for it was with a sinking voice that she asked: "What are you going to do now ?" Mr.Trelawny too must have had a suspicion of her feelings, for he answered in a low tone: "To unroll the mummy of Queen Tera!" She came close to him and said pleadingly in a whisper: "Father, you are not going to unswathe her! All you men...! And in the glare of light!" "But why not, my dear ?" "Just think, Father, a woman! All alone! In such a way! In such a place! Oh! it's cruel, cruel!" She was manifestly much overcome.

Her cheeks were flaming red, and her eyes were full of indignant tears.
Her father saw her distress; and, sympathising with it, began to comfort her.

I was moving off; but he signed to me to stay.

I took it that after the usual manner of men he wanted help on such an occasion, and man-like wished to throw on someone else the task of dealing with a woman in indignant distress.

However, he began to appeal first to her reason: "Not a woman, dear; a mummy! She has been dead nearly five thousand years!" "What does that matter?
Sex is not a matter of years! A woman is a woman, if she had been dead five thousand centuries! And you expect her to arise out of that long sleep! It could not be real death, if she is to rise out of it! You have led me to believe that she will come alive when the Coffer is opened!" "I did, my dear; and I believe it! But if it isn't death that has been the matter with her all these years, it is something uncommonly like it.