Now, the child had inherited his father's high place.
Already the news had reached the marabout of Temacin, and flashed on to
Touggourt. But no one suspected that the viper which had bitten the
Saint had taken the form of a French bullet. Perhaps, had all been known
to the Government, it would have seemed poetical justice that the arch
plotter had met his death thus. But his plots had died with him; and if
Islam mourned because the Moul Saa they hoped for had been snatched from
them, they mourned in secret. For above other sects and nations, Islam
knows how to be silent.
When they were settled in the villa near the oasis (Saidee and Victoria
too, for they needed no urging to wait till it was known whether Nevill
Caird would live or die) Lady MacGregor said with her usual briskness to
Stephen: "Of course I've telegraphed to that _creature_."
Stephen looked at her blankly.
"That hard-hearted little beast, Josette Soubise," the fairy aunt
explained.
Stephen could hardly help laughing, though he had seldom felt less
merry. But that the tiny Lady MacGregor should refer to tall Josette,
who was nearly twice her height, as a "little beast," struck him as
somewhat funny. Besides, her toy-terrier snappishness was comic.
"I've nothing _against_ the girl," Lady MacGregor felt it right to go
on, "except that she's an idiot to bite off her nose to spite her own
face--and Nevill's too. I don't approve of her at all as a wife for him,
you must understand.
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