The girl is of a great intelligence, and my sister takes an
interest in her. Josette teaches her many things, and they talk.
Mouni--that is the Kabyle's name--tells of her home life to my sister.
One thing she did was to serve a beautiful foreign lady in the house of
a rich Arab. She was only a child then, not more than thirteen, for such
girls grow up early; but she has always thought about that lady, who was
good to her, and very sad. Mouni told Josette she had never seen any one
so beautiful, and that her mistress had hair of a natural colour, redder
than hair dyed with henna and powdered with gold dust. It was this
describing of the hair which brought the story back to my head when Miss
Ray had gone, because she has hair like that, and perhaps her sister had
it too."
"By Jove, we'll run over to Tlemcen in the car, and see that Kabyle
girl," Nevill eagerly proposed, carefully looking at his friend, and not
at Jeanne Soubise. But she raised her eyebrows, then drew them together,
and her frank manner changed. With that shadow of a frown, and smileless
eyes and lips, there was something rather formidable about the handsome
young woman.
"Mees Ray may like to manage all her own beesiness," she remarked. And
it occurred to Stephen that it would be a propitious moment to choose
such curios as he wished to buy. In a few moments Mademoiselle Soubise
was her pleasant self again, indicating the best points of the things he
admired, and giving him their history.
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