MISS BRENDA ARRIVES, AND PHADRIG THE EGYPTIAN PROPHESIES "Now, this is just too sweet of you, Niti, to come so soon after we got here.

In five minutes more I should have written you a note, asking you and the Professor to come and take lunch with us to-morrow, and here you've anticipated me, so we have the pleasure of seeing you all the sooner." These were the words with which Miss Brenda van Huysman greeted Nitocris as she entered the drawing-room of the suite of apartments which formed her home for the time being in London.

I say her home advisedly, because, although her father and mother also occupied it, she was virtually, if not nominally, mistress undisputed of the splendid camping-place.
She was an almost perfect type of the highly developed, highly educated American girl of to-day, a marvellous compound of intense energy and languorous grace.

She had done as brilliantly at Vassar as Nitocris had done at Girton and London, and she had also rowed stroke in the Ladies' Eight, and was champion fencer of the College.

Yet as far as her physical presence was concerned, she was just a "Gibson Girl" of the daintiest type--fair-skinned, blue-eyed, golden-haired--her hair had a darker gleam of bronze in it in certain lights--exquisitely moulded features which seemed capable of every sort of expression within a few changing moments, and a poise of head and carriage of body which only perfect health and the most scientific physical training can produce.