He did not go back to the public rooms and the end of the evening found him still sitting in the Governor’s study with Sanois and a few of the more Gallicized chiefs. And for some time after the sheiks had retired he lingered chatting with the general, delaying as long as possible the moment when he must face alone the shattering self-understanding that had come to him.
The chiming of a deep-toned clock warned him at length of the lateness of the hour and he had risen reluctantly to his feet when Patrice Lemaire burst into the room. The boy’s usually smiling face was flushed with anger and he flung himself into a chair with an explosion of wrath that did not tend to make more comprehensible the rambling sentences he let fall. That somebody had gone home early and defrauded him of the dances she had promised; that somebody else, name witheld, was a vile calumniator; and that there had been a “beastly scene,” which he did not particularise, was all he would vouchsafe. And unable to get anything more definite from him the elder man soon left him to nurse his grievances in solitude.
There were still a few guests wandering about the hall waiting for carriages that were delayed, and a harassed attache seized upon Carew to beg a lift for an elderly Frenchman who was forlornly contemplating a weary walk back to his hotel at Mustapha.
Only when he had dropped his talkative companion was Carew able to give full sway to his own thoughts, and when he reached the villa he walked up the flagged path too absorbed to notice the shafts of light filtering through the closed jalousies of the big front room which, though kept in scrupulous orderliness, had never been used since his mother’s death.
He passed into the Mauresque hall and was moving slowly in the direction of his own rooms when Hosein, emerging from a shadowy corner, glided forward to intercept him.
“The lalla,” he murmured hesitatingly, his hands sweeping upward to his forehead in a quick salaam.
His master faced him swiftly.
“The lalla—?” he repeated sharply.
The big Arab nodded.
“The lalla who awaits my lord,” he said softly.