The girl appeared to be well-shaped enough, though her strong white throat was short, and the hands which lay on the wide window ledge were as small as a child's. Yet like a shadow thrown on the wall behind her was a lurking impression of deformity of body and mind, a spirit cast out of her, to point at something veiled. If there could have lingered in the mind of Max a grain of doubt concerning Rose Doran's confession, it was burnt up in a moment; for the girl was an Aubrey Beardsley caricature of Rose. No need to ask if this were Mademoiselle Delatour. He knew. And this lieutenant in the uniform of the Spahis was the "namesake" of whom the men had talked in the train.
CHAPTER X
THE VOICE OF THE LEGION
It was all far worse even than Max had expected; and the next few days were a nightmare. The resemblance between the girl and her mother—once his mother, whom he had as a boy adored—made the effect more 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-Abbés 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 château. 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-Abbés 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 the lynx was roused. Never having deeply loved the man, she took pleasure in using her claws on him. In taunting him with what he might have had, however, she let the identity of the newsbringer leak out.
De la Tour then warned her passionately against le jeune aventurier Americain, and almost frightened the girl into disbelieving the whole story. But proofs were forthcoming, and with the landlord's wife, who enjoyed sharing a borrowed halo, Josephine Delatour—or Josephine Doran—went to Algiers to await Mrs. Reeves's arrival. Meanwhile, with the money she procured from Max, the girl planned to buy herself a trousseau, and eventually departed, rejoicing in her lover's discomfiture. Whether or no this attitude were safe with such a man remained to be seen. As for Max—the messenger who had brought the tidings—since he showed no desire to flirt with her, Josephine saw no reason to be interested in him. Besides, she could hardly believe that he was not somehow to blame for having kept what ought to have been hers for his own all these years. She had not loved her supposed father and mother, who had interfered with her pleasure, disapproving of what they called her extravagance and frivolity.... There was no grief to the girl in learning that the Delatours were not her parents.
Nor did it seem to Josephine that gratitude was due Max for resigning in her favour. She was greedily ready to grab everything, without thanks, just as her lynx-prototype would snatch a piece of meat, if it could get it, from another lynx. She grudged the years of luxury and pleasure which she ought to have had; and could she have realized that she had made of Lieutenant de la Tour an enemy for Max Doran, she would have been glad. It was right that two men should quarrel over a woman.
While he was arranging Josephine's affairs, Max saw nothing of Sanda and Colonel DeLisle. He had thought it best to take up his quarters at another hotel, and his only communication with them was by letter. He wrote Sanda that when his business was finished he would make up his mind what to do; but in any case he hoped that he might be allowed to bid her and Colonel DeLisle farewell. In answer, came an invitation from the Colonel to see the Salle d'Honneur of the Legion, the famous gallery where records of its heroes were kept. "That is," (Sanda said, writing for her father) "if you are interested in the Legion."