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Page 45
Could she turn a deaf ear to the woman she had known as a girl almost
twenty-five years ago? Could she, on the other hand, go to her and
risk leaving the girl at her side exposed to the indescribable appeal
of the East? Should she send her back to England, or take her as far
as Luxor and leave her there under the social wing of Lady Thistleton?
"Have you learned any more about the Arab who follows at a distance
when you ride in the morning, dear?"
Damaris nodded.
It seemed she had overheard Lady Thistleton talking about him; his
palaces in the desert and at Cairo; his stables and falcons.
The girl stopped for a moment, then continued:
"He has an English name and seems to be a millionaire, and something
else which I could not catch, but by the sound of the
Prickly-Thistleton's voice it seemed to be something awful!"
"This"--the old lady touched the letter in her lap--"this is from his,
mother, dear, asking me to go and see her. If I do, I will tell you
the whole story when I come back. Don't ask me anything until then,
dear."
Silence fell between them as the hotel woke to another sunlit day.
"Something will happen to decide me," mused the old lady as, a little
later, she took her mail from Hobson, who moved majestically about the
room with bath-salts and towels. "From Ben," she continued, flicking a
lightning glance at the face which, went suddenly rosy pink as it
rested against her knee. "Written from the Oasis of Kurkur near the
First Cataract. He hasn't seen lion yet, but has heard a lot about the
one which is causing a panic amongst the dragomen in Luxor. Oh! how
nice for him! Do you remember fat Sybil Sidmouth, the crack shot?"
It seemed that jolly Sybil Sidmouth, well known at Bisley and who had
brought a thin stepmother devastated with nerves to winter in Luxor,
had also fallen a victim to lion gossip, and had wired a bet to Ben
Kelham that she would bring in the lion's skin.
"They are meeting at Assouan to discuss plans . . ."
"Yes?" said Damaris indifferently, and added vindictively, "Knocking
about in the desert might reduce her a bit," and gave no thought to the
moment of that very morning when, under some uncontrollable impulse,
she had turned the stallion Sooltan and taken him back at full gallop
and to within a few yards of the Arab who, in European riding-kit and
boots from Peter Yapp, had raised his right hand as she had thundered
past standing in her stirrups.
A woman could keep a poultry-farm till the last trump, and even then
never awake to the fact that the same brand of corn is appreciated both
by the goose and the gander!
And, sure enough, something happened to decide her grace before the
setting of the sun.
CHAPTER XIV
"_Oh! for a falconer's voice to lure
This tassel gentle back again_."
SHAKESPEARE.
Lunch, desultory shopping and tea with friends in Cairo had been the
order of the afternoon following the dawn which had found her grace at
the window trying to come to a decision about her god-daughter. They
were just returning from these festivities and were negotiating the
last cross-roads of the Sharia Abbas when a native policeman, waving
his arm like a semaphore, stepped into the slowly-moving stream of
traffic.
Resulted the usual maelstrom of motors, native vehicles, stray animals
and trams, in which tossed the native pedestrian as, agile and
vociferous, he slipped in and out of the block, calling loudly upon
Allah in his extremity.
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