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Updated: June 8, 2025
In a moment the negress came back. "Hadda will lead the Little Rose to her mistress. She is glad that it is to be now, and not later." "Be very careful what you say, and forget nothing that she says," was Saidee's last advice. And it sounded very Eastern to Victoria. She hated her errand, but undertook it without further protest, since it was for Saidee's sake. Hadda was old and ugly.
Victoria did not approve, she said, and hoped some other plan might be found; but in Saidee's opinion there was no other plan which offered any real chance of success. In their situation, they could not afford to stick at trifles, and neither could Mr. Knight, if he wished to save Victoria from being married against her will to an Arab.
He would not tell the Arab, who escorted him downstairs again, whence he had come, but it was a long distance and he had walked. He must return on foot, and if he were to be back by early morning, he ought to get off at once. Stephen made no effort to keep him, though he would have liked Saidee's messenger to be seen by Caird. Nevill had not begun to undress, when Stephen knocked at his door.
But as for Saidee's sister, the child he remembered, who had been foolish enough and irritating enough to find her way to Oued Tolga, he felt towards her, in listening to the story of her coming, as an ardent student might feel towards a persistent midge which disturbed his studies.
"Childie, childie, comfort me, forgive me!" she sobbed. Victoria woke instantly. She opened her eyes, and Saidee's wet face was close to hers. The girl said not a word, but wrapped her arms round her sister, drawing the bowed head on to her breast, and then she crooned lovingly over it, with little foolish mumblings, as she used to do in Paris when Mrs. Ray's unkindness had made Saidee cry.
A meal had been cleared away, in a room larger and better furnished than Saidee's and on the floor stood a large copper incense-burner, a thin blue smoke filtering through the perforations, clouding the atmosphere and loading it with heavy perfume.
Hardly a night had passed since their parting, that Victoria had not thought of those talks, and imagined herself again lying with her head on Saidee's arm, listening to stories of Saidee's life. She had taken it for granted that she would be put in her sister's room, and seeing the bed made up, and her luggage unpacked in the room adjoining, was a blow.
But Sabine was reading something to him far more interesting than any novel written by the greatest genius of all ages; a collection of Saidee's letters, which he invariably read through, from first to last, every night before even trying to sleep. The chance to be in the game of rescue was new life to him.
Otherwise, why should he have been so kind since the first, and have appeared this second time, when she had almost forgotten him in the press of other thoughts? Why should he be going where she was going, and why should he have a friend who had known Algiers and Algeria since the time when Saidee's letters had ceased?
I haven't forgotten one. Oh, Saidee, dearest, I've come such a long way to find you. Do be glad to see me do!" Her voice broke. She put out her hands pleadingly the childish hands that had seemed pathetically pretty to Stephen Knight. A look of intense concentration darkened Saidee's eyes. She appeared to question herself, to ask her intelligence what was best to do.
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