gruesome.

Josephine Delatour was coarse minded and sly, inordinately vain, caring
for nothing in life except the admiration of such men as she had met and
mistaken for gentlemen. Her way of receiving the news of her change of
fortune disgusted Max, sickened him so utterly that he could not bear to
think of her reigning in Jack Doran's house. She was torn between
pleasure in the prospect of being rich, and suspicious that there was a
plot to kidnap her, like the heroine of a sensational novel. She did not
want to go to America. She wanted to stay in Sidi-bel-Abbes and triumph
over all the women who had snubbed her. She boasted of her admirers, and
hinted that even without money she could marry any one of a dozen young
officers. But the one for whom she seemed really to care--if it were in
her to care for any one except herself--was the namesake of whom Max had
heard laughing hints.

At the time it had not occurred to him that the name of the alleged
"cousin" must be Delatour; but so it was though the dark young man with
the waxed moustache spelled his name differently, in the more
aristocratic way, with three syllables. When Josephine boasted that,
though he was from a great family, with a castle on the River Loire, he
called himself her cousin, Max realized that the Lieutenant of Spahis
must be a son or nephew of the de la Tour from whom Rose and Jack had
taken the chateau. So far, however, was Max Doran from being elated by
this tie of blood, that he mentally dubbed his relative a cad. It was
all he could do to persuade Josephine not to tell Raoul de la Tour that
she had come into money, and a name as aristocratic as his own--in fact,
that she was qualifying as a heroine of romance. Only by appealing to
the crude sense of drama the girl had in her could she be prevented from
stupidly throwing out bait to fortune-hunters. But having wired again to
Edwin Reeves, and hearing that Mrs. Reeves, already in Paris, had
started for Algiers, a plan occurred to Max. He advised Josephine, if
she thought that de la Tour cared for her, to tell him that she was
giving up work in the Hotel Splendide; also that she was leaving
Sidi-bel-Abbes forever; and then see what he would say. What he did say
was such a blow to the girl's vanity that, when she was sure he had no
intention of marrying a poor secretary, she flung the dazzling truth at
his face. Repentant, he tried to turn his late insults into honest
lovemaking; but the temper of