"Yes. Sight of—Josette. One thing I—can't have."
"Yes, you can," said Stephen quietly. "She's coming. She started the minute she heard you were ill, and she'll be in Touggourt day after to-morrow."
"You're not—pulling my leg?"
"To do that would be very injurious. But I thought good news would be better than medicine."
"Thank you, Legs. You're a great doctor," was all that Nevill answered. But his temperature began to go down within the hour.
"He'll get the girl, of course," remarked Lady MacGregor, when Stephen told her. "That is, if he lives."
"He will live, with this hope to buoy him up," said Stephen. "And she can't hold out against him for a minute when she sees him as he is. Indeed, I rather fancy she's been in a mood to change her mind this last month."
"Why this last month?"
"Oh, I think she misunderstood Nevill's interest in Miss Ray, and that helped her to understand herself. When she finds out that it's for her he still cares, not some one else, she'll do anything he asks." Afterwards it proved that he was right.
The day after the arrival at Touggourt, the house in its garden near the oasis was very quiet. The Arab servants, whom Lady MacGregor had taken with the place, moved silently, and for Nevill's sake voices were lowered. There was a brooding stillness of summer heat over the one little patch of flowery peace and perfumed shade in the midst of the fierce golden desert. Yet to the five members of the oddly assembled family it was as if the atmosphere tingled with electricity. There was a curious, even oppressive sense of suspense, of waiting for something to happen.