Accordingly Gatton set off with the detective who had brought the news
of Marie's arrest and I, turning in the opposite direction, proceeded
towards my cottage in such a state of mental tumult respecting what
the end of all this would be and what it might mean for Isobel, that I
found myself unable to think connectedly; and needless to say I failed
to conjure up by any stretch of the imagination a theory which could
cover this amazing and terrible sequence of events.




CHAPTER VII

THE CAT OF BUBASTIS


"She belongs to the innumerable family of cats which suddenly came
forth from the ruins of Tell Bastah in 1878," I wrote, Sir Gaston
Maspero's "Egyptian Art" lying before me on the table, "and were in a
few years scattered over the whole world."

"She is Bâst, a goddess of good family, the worship of whom flourished
especially in the east of the delta, and she is very often drawn or
named on the monuments, although they do not tell us enough of her
myths or her origin. She was allied or related to the Sun, and was now
said to be his sister or wife, now his daughter. She sometimes filled
a gracious and beneficent rôle, protecting men against contagious
diseases or evil spirits, keeping them off by the music of her
sistrum: she had also her hours of treacherous perversity, during