"Let us sit down," Hadassah said. "But before we begin our talk, I must send Michael to the nursery. I am really so foolish about him—I wanted you to see him." She rang the bell and a pretty Coptic girl in native dress came into the room; the boy went on with her without demur. The girl had looked at Margaret with big brown eyes; they carried her mind back to the portraits of Egyptian women painted in Roman times on the walls of tombs.
"What a good little chap!" Margaret said. "I'm sure he wanted to stay with you. How marked the Coptic type is!—they are the true descendants of the ancient Egyptians, aren't they? He looked so fair beside her."
"Dear little son! He will be perfectly happy with her. He loves everybody and everything. I sometimes wonder if it means a lack of character. He rarely cries, and he sings baby-songs to himself all day long."
"What a darling!" Margaret said. "And how fair!"
"Yes," Hadassah said, "quite English." The words were spoken without malice, but they brought the colour to Margaret's cheeks. Hadassah saw it, and said laughingly, "I was granted my wish—I wanted to have a boy as like my husband as possible. He wanted a girl, I think."
Margaret laid her hand on Hadassah's arm. "Did you mind me writing?" she said. "I hope you didn't think it very odd?" Her voice broke. "I wanted your advice. I knew you and your husband could help me."
"Dear Miss Lampton," Hadassah said, "I'm so glad you wrote, and of course I understood. It's worth while to have suffered oneself, so as to be able to understand and help others in their suffering."
Margaret knew all that the words implied, but with her habitual reserve, she answered as though Hadassah had referred to her cousin's death. The Nationalist plot in which he was implicated had added to the horror which British society in Cairo had openly expressed at Michael Ireton's marriage with a Syrian, who was a cousin of the ill-advised youth.
"Michael told me something of the tragedy," Margaret said. "You must have felt his death terribly."
Margaret's words were conventional, but Hadassah did not miss the sympathy and feeling which lay underneath them.