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Updated: May 2, 2025
Victoria shivered, for the picture was vivid before her eyes, as Miluda painted it. "Give me the key," she said in a low voice. "The key of the master's heart is his son," the other answered, in a tone that kept down anger and humiliation. "Even me he would sacrifice to his boy. I know it well, and I hate the child.
I alone fill his life." She paused, hoping perhaps that Victoria would answer; but the girl was silent, biting her lip, her eyes cast down. So Miluda talked on, more quietly. "There is a wise woman in the city, who brings me perfumes and silks which have come to Oued Tolga by caravan from Tunis.
"I will speak the truth with thee," said Miluda, "because thy face pleases me, though I prefer my own. Thine is pure and good, like the face of the white angel that is ever at our right hand; and even if I should speak falsely, I think thou wouldst not be deceived. Before I saw thee, I did not care whether thou wert happy or sad.
You see she thinks me already old at twenty-eight! Of course the real reason that Cassim shuts me up and won't let me go, is because he knows I could ruin not only him, but the hopes of his people. Miluda doesn't dream that I'm of so much importance in his eyes. The only thing she's jealous of is the boy, Mohammed, who's at school in the town of Oued Tolga, in charge of an uncle.
Cassim guesses how Miluda hates the child, and I believe that's the reason he daren't have him here. He's afraid something might happen, although the excuse he makes is, that he wants his boy to learn French, and know something of French ways.
The very existence of Miluda was to her a dreadful mystery upon which she could not bear to let her mind dwell. "I'm not sure," Saidee murmured. "Let me think. This means something very curious, I can't think what. But I should like to know. It can't make things worse for us if you accept her invitation. It may make them better. Will you go and see what the creature wants?"
Physically it was a relief to walk even the short distance between Saidee's house and Miluda's; but her cheeks tingled with some emotion she could hardly understand when she saw that the Ouled Naïl's garden-court was larger and more beautiful than Saidee's. Miluda, however, was not waiting for her in the garden.
Victoria did not know what to think, what to do. In place of the sad and lonely girl she had pictured, here stood a woman already selfish and heartless, who might become cruel and terrible. No one had ever looked at Victoria Ray as Miss Lorenzi was looking now, not even Miluda, the Ouled Naïl, who had stared her out of countenance, curiously and maliciously at the same time.
But he will be better in a few days if he takes the draughts which the marabout has blessed for him; and if the wedding is not in a week, it will be a few days later. It is in Allah's hands." "I tell thee, it will be never," Victoria persisted. "And I believe thou but sayest these things to torture me." "Dost thou not love Si Maïeddine?" Miluda asked innocently. "Not at all."
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