A MOMENTOUS COMMUNICATION 309 CHAPTER XX A MOMENTOUS COMMUNICATION G regory had, after finishing the record, sat without moving until the dinner-hour. It was a relief to him to know that his father had not spent the last years of his life as he had feared, as a miserable slave—ill-treated, reviled, insulted, perhaps chained and beaten by some brutal taskmaster; but had been in a position where, save that he was an exile, kept from his home and wife, his lot had not been unbearable. He knew more of him than he had ever known before. It was as a husband that his mother had always spoken of him; but here he saw that he was daring, full of resource, quick to grasp any opportunity, hopeful and yet patient, longing eagerly to rejoin his wife, and yet content to wait until the chances should be all in his favour. He was unaffectedly glad thus to know him, to be able in future to think of him as one of whom he would have been proud, who would assuredly have won his way to distinction.

It was not so that he had before thought of him. His mother had said that he was of good family, and that it was on account of his marriage with her that he had quarrelled with his relations. It had always seemed strange to him that he should have been content to take, as she had told him, an altogether subordinate position in a mercantile house in Alexandria. She had accounted for his knowledge of Arabic by the fact that he had been for two years exploring the temples and tombs of Egypt with a learned professor ; but surely, as a man of good family, he could have found something to do in England instead of coming out to take so humble a post in Egypt. Gregory knew nothing of the difficulty that a young man in England has in obtaining an appointment of any kind or of fighting his way single-handed. Influence went for much in Egypt, and it seemed to him that even if