Why did not some strong man strangle women like Millicent Mervill? Why had not she herself the courage to tell her what she thought of her? Probably Millicent would only smile and show her perfect teeth—they always made Meg furious, because they were even better than her own, and hers were, so she thought, her strongest asset—and say, "Poor girl! You are a little overtired"; or she would say, "You have so much to make you happy, dear, and I have so little. Don't be unkind—I only long for sympathy."
Millicent's moments of self-pity were mean and contemptible and yet they were effective.
The only thing to do was to leave the two alone, to trust Michael and go about her business.
Presently she heard Michael say: "Well, I'll leave you to rest until lunch-time—I can't idle while Freddy is working like a nigger. You'll be all right, I know, with your book and a cigarette."
Margaret slipped round to the back of the hut; she did not want to speak to Michael; she was thankful that he had left Mrs. Mervill, but his voice had been too kind, too nice. Meg did not know what she would have liked him to do, what he could have done otherwise. She only knew that the niceness of his voice annoyed her.
When the overseer's whistle for the workmen to "down picks and spades" sounded and the time was ripe for Freddy to appear, Margaret sauntered off to meet him. When she saw him coming she hurried towards him. How she loved him!
When they met she said, "That cat Mrs. Mervill is here. Oh, Freddy, I hate her!"
Freddy laughed. Millicent Mervill, with her extreme modernity and virile passions, was so far removed from the thought of the tomb, from the brown mummy, whose golden ribbons he had been examining; his sister's annoyance was so utterly unlike her mood of the earlier morning! He had never seen Meg so moved as she had been in the tomb. He felt a little relieved that a very human and irritating influence had suddenly thrust itself across her path. Meg was getting too enthralled in Egypt. These thoughts flashed through his mind.
"Good old Meg," he said tenderly. "The fighting Lampton's roused, is it?"
"Yes," Meg said. "I am roused. She's so insolent, Freddy."