"Fortune, later you will be sorry for this spirit," she said, when she felt the tremor of wrath no longer in her throat.
Fortune turned a page, and jotted down some notes with a pencil. Sad as she was at heart, tragic as she knew the result of this outbreak to be, she could hardly repress a smile at the thought of her mother's discomfiture.
And so the chasm widened, and went on widening till the end of time.
Mrs. Chedsoye was glad that the hall-maid knocked and came in just then. It at least saved her the ignominy of a retreat. She dressed, however, with the same deliberate care that she had always used. Nothing ever deranged her sense of proportion relative to her toilet, nothing ever made her forget its importance.
"Good-by, dear," she said. "I shall be in at dinner." If the maid had any suspicion that there had been a quarrel, she should at least be impressed with the fact that she, Mrs. Chedsoye, was not to blame for it.
Fortune nibbled the end of her pencil.
The door closed behind her mother and the maid. She waited for a time. Then she sprang to the window and stood there. She saw her mother driven off. She was dressed in pearl-grey, with a Reynolds' hat of grey velour and sweeping plumes: as handsome and distinguished a woman as could be found that day in all Cairo. The watcher threw her Baedeker, her note-book, and her pencil violently into a corner. It had come to her at last, this thing she had been striving for since noon. She did not care what the risks were; the storm was too high in her heart to listen to the voice of caution. She would do it; for she judged it the one thing, in justice to her own blood, she must accomplish. She straightway dressed for the street; and if she did not give the same care as her mother to the vital function, she produced an effect that merited comparison.
She loitered before the porter's bureau till she saw him busily engaged in answering questions of some women tourists. Then, with a slight but friendly nod, she stepped into the bureau and stopped before the key-rack. She hung up her key, but took it down again, as if she had changed her mind. At least, this was the porter's impression as he bowed to her in the midst of the verbal bombardment. Fortune went up-stairs. Ten or fifteen minutes elapsed, when she returned, hung up the key, and walked briskly toward the side-entrance at the very moment George, in his fruitless search of her, pushed through the revolving doors in front. And all the time she was wondering how it was that her knees did not give under. It was terrible. She balanced between laughter and tears, hysterically.
She had gone scarcely a hundred yards when she was accosted by a tall Arab whom she indistinctly recollected having seen before; where, she could not definitely imagine. It was the ragged green turban that cleared away her puzzlement. The Arab was the supposed beggar over whom Percival (how easily she had fallen into the habit of calling him that!) had stumbled. He stood so tall and straight that she knew he wasn't going to beg; so naturally she stopped. Without a word, without even a look that expressed anything, he slipped a note into her hand, bowed with Oriental gravity, and stepped aside for her to proceed. She read the note hastily as she continued her way. Horace? Why should he wish to meet her that evening, at the southeast corner of the Shâri'a Mahomoud-El-Fäläki, a step or so from the British Consulate's? And she mustn't come in a carriage nor tell any one where she was going? Why all such childish mystery? He could see her far more conveniently in the lounging-room of the hotel. She tore the note into scraps and flung them upon the air. She was afraid. She was almost certain why he wished to meet her where neither her mother's nor her uncle's eyes would be within range. Should she meet him? Deeper than this, dared she? Why had she come to Cairo, when at Mentone she had known peace, such peace as destiny was generous enough to dole out to her? And now, out of this tolerable peace, a thousand hands were reaching to rend her heart, to wring it. She decided quickly. Since she had come this far, to go on to the end would add but little to her burden. Better to know all too soon than too late.
That the note had not been directed to her and that she was totally unfamiliar with Ryanne's handwriting, escaped her. She had too many other things upon her mind to see all things clearly, especially such trifles. She finished her walk, returning by the way she had gone, gave the key to the lift-boy, and in her room dropped down upon the bed, dry-eyed and weary. The most eventful day she had ever known.