might be
happy in another love--he tried to hope it, but did not succeed
sincerely--he would always have it to remember, until the day of his
death, that once she had loved him.

As far out from Touggourt as Temacin, Lady MacGregor came to meet them,
in a ramshackle carriage, filled with rugs and pillows in case Nevill
wished to change. But he was not in a state to wish for anything, and De
Vigne decided for him. He was to go on in the bassour, to the villa
which had been let to Lady MacGregor by an officer of the garrison. It
was there the little Mohammed was to have been kept and guarded by the
Highlanders, if the great scheme had not been suddenly changed in some
of its details. 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. Nevill could marry a _princess_, and she's nothing
but a little school-teacher with a dimple or two, whose mother and
father were less than _nobody_. Still, as Nevill wants her, she might
have the grace to show appreciation of the honour, by not spoiling his
life. He's never been the same sinc