waken and keep alive in Michael
the only element in his character upon which she could work, the very
element he strove to banish and subdue.

Later on in the evening she sought him out, because she had discovered
that Margaret Lampton was living in her brother's camp and that she was
in daily companionship with Michael. Freddy had told her this to anger
her. He was proud of his sister's beauty and pleased that Mrs. Mervill
had seen her admired.

"Michael," Mrs. Mervill said, "that dark girl is in love with you. She
hates me."

"Don't talk nonsense!" Michael said. "Why will you spoil our
interesting conversation by reverting to a forbidden topic?"

They had been talking intellectually and seriously for quite half an
hour. Mrs. Mervill was a great reader, and she had determined to place
herself in a position to talk intelligently, if not learnedly, to
Michael about things Egyptian. She had been reading what Ebers had to
say about the tragedy of Isis and Osiris being the foundation of many
latter-day Egyptian romances. It had even found its way into _The
Thousand and One Nights_.

Mrs. Mervill was much more word-fluent than Margaret. Often her
imagery was charming.

"Because it fills my heart, Michael. It is the background of
everything. I saw the birth of hatred in her eyes--she has never hated
before."

"I don't think she knows what hate means," he said, "and I wish you
would leave her alone."

"I have not spoken about her before."

"You said she would be fat and coarse at forty."

Millicent Mervill caught his hands in hers. "You dear silly boy, so
she will, both fat and complacent, but then I shall be thin and
shrewish and shrivelled."

Michael laughed. "You are a tease!" he said good-naturedly.

"'The Rogue in Porcelain' used to be my name at school. But tell
me--how long is that dark-haired girl going to stay with her brother?"

"I don't know," Michael said. "If she doesn't feel the heat, perhaps
until he returns to England and the camp breaks up."

Mrs. Mervill clenched her pretty teeth. "And you expect me to be good
and quiet and submissive and stay here?"

"I want you to be reasonable."

"That's out of the question--I very seldom am, and I am not going to be
to please Miss Lampton, I can tell you!"

"Then what are you going to do?" He could not be hard on the woman for
loving him; he wished he could help her and induce her to be
reasonable. If she had been free, he would hav