It Happened in Egypt | Page 6

an awakening! He had posed as a bachelor;
but after her marriage she found out (and the world with her) that he
was a widower with one child, a little girl he had practically abandoned.
Biddy adopted her, though the mother had been a rather undesirable
Frenchwoman; and now when I saw her smiling at the tall white girl on
the Laconia, I had thought for an instant that Biddy and her
stepdaughter might be in flight together. O'Brien was a drunkard, as
well as a demagogue; and not long after Brigit's flitting with him there
was a scandal about the accepting of bribes from politicians on the
opposing side, apparently his greatest enemies; but a minor scandal
compared to what came some years afterward. O'Brien's name was
implicated in the blowing up of the World-Republican Building in
Washington, and the wrecking of Senator Marlowe's special train after
his speech against socialist interests, but the coward turned informer
against his friends and associates in the secret society of which he had
been a leader, and saved himself by sending them to prison. From that
day until his death he lived the life of a hunted animal flying from the
hounds of vengeance. Brigit stood by him in spite of threats against her
life as well as his, and the life of the child. Since then, though she
answered none of our letters, we had heard rumours. The girl Esmé,
whom the avengers had threatened to kidnap, was supposed to be
hidden in some convent-school in Europe. As for Brigit, she was said to
be training for a hospital nurse: reported to have become a missionary
in India, China, and one or two other countries; seen on the music-hall
stage, and traced to Johannesburg, where she had married a
diamond-merchant; yet here she was on board the Laconia, unchanged
in looks, or nature, and the guest of a much paragraphed, much
proposed to American heiress en route to Egypt.

While Brigit was telling me the real story of her last two years, as
governess, companion, teacher of music, and journalist, Miss Gilder
regarded us sidewise from amid her bodyguard of young men.
Evidently she was dying to know who was the acquaintance her darling
Biddy had picked up in mid-Mediterranean the moment her back was
turned; and at last, unable to restrain herself longer, she made use of
some magic trick to attach the band of youths to her aunt. Then,
separating herself with almost indecent haste from the group, she
marched up to us, gazing--I might say, staring--with large unfriendly
eyes at the intruder.
Brigit promptly accounted for me, however, rolling her "r's"
patriotically because I reminded her of Ireland. "Do let me introduce
Lord Ernest Borrow," she said. "I must have told you about him in my
stories, when you were a child, for he was me first love."
"It was the other way round," I objected. "She wouldn't look at me. I
adored her."
Biddy glared a warning. Her eyes said, "Silly fellow, don't you know
every girl wants to be the one and only love of a man's life?"
I had supposed that this old craze had gone out of fashion. But perhaps
there are a few primitive things which will never go out of fashion with
women.
Now that I had Miss Gilder's proud young face opposite mine, I saw
that it wasn't quite so perfect as I'd fancied when she flashed by in her
tall whiteness. Her nose, pure Greek in profile, seen in full was --well,
just neat American: a straight, determined little twentieth-century nose.
The full red mouth, not small, struck me as being determined also,
rather than classic, despite the daintily drawn cupid's bow of the short
upper lip. I realized too that the long-lashed, wide-open, and wide-apart
eyes were of the usual bluish-gray possessed by half the girls one
knows. And as for the thick wavy hair pushed crisply forward by the
white hood, now it was out of the sun's glamour, there was more brown
than gold in it. I said to myself, that the face with the firm cleft chin
was only just pretty enough to give a great heiress or a youthful

princess the reputation of a beauty; a combination desired and generally
produced by journalists. Then, as I was thinking this, while Brigit
explained me, Miss Gilder suddenly smiled. I was dazzled. No wonder
Biddy loved her. It would be a wonder if I didn't love her myself before
I knew what was happening.
And so I should instantly have done, perhaps, if it hadn't been for
Biddy's eyes seeming to come between mine and Miss Gilder's: and the
fact that at the moment I was in quest of another treasure than a
woman's heart. My thoughts were running