two hours before noon
Olivia was very pale . She had hardly slept , night-long . Alarm at the inexplicable disappearance of St. George at dinner-time the day before and at the discovery that old Malakh was nowhere about had , by morning , deepened to unreasoning fear among them all . And then Olivia , knowing nothing of what had taken place in the room of the tombs , had resolved upon a desperate expedient , had bundled into an airship her almost prostrate aunt , Mr. Frothingham and his excited little daughter , and had borne down upon the Palace of the Litany two hours before noon . Amory , frantic with apprehension , had stayed behind with Jarvo , certain that St. George could not have left the mountain . But now that Olivia stood before the prince it required but a moment to convince her that Prince Tabnit really knew nothing of St. George 's whereabouts . Indeed , since his gift of Phoenician wine , sealed three thousand years ago , and the immediate evanishment of the two Americans , his Highness had no longer vexed his thought with them , and he was genuinely amazed to know that -LRB- in a world which was an intaglio of his own designing -RRB- these two had actually spent yesterday at the king 's palace on Mount Khalak .