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Updated: May 29, 2025
"Oh, the mantle, I had forgot. So you stole in, disguised, to violate my hospitality, to outrage my harem, to gaze upon the forbidden faces of women and to steal the bride " "I tell you I was trying to rescue the girl for her French family. She is French and Tewfick Pasha is only " "And what is that to me?
McLean looked politely attentive; Ryder's face maintained that look of concentration which guarded the fluctuations of his feelings. "It was many years ago," the pasha murmured, putting down his coffee cup and selecting another cigarette. "Not long after her mother's marriage to me.... A very charming little girl I was positively attached to her," Tewfick added reminiscently.
Past the general he shot a look of warning at the girl. "I was trying to get hold of her for her family in France She is really a French girl. Tewfick Pasha is not her father but her " he could not find the word and dropped into English. "Her step-father do you understand? And he had no business to marry her off, so I tried to steal her for the French family.
She thinks she's the daughter of Tewfick Pasha. Her mother married the Turk and died very soon afterwards and he brought up this girl as his own. She says she's his only child." He paused, ostensibly to blow an elaborate smoke ring, but actually to enjoy McLean's astonishment. As astonishment, it was distinctly vivid. It verged upon a genuine horror as Ryder's meaning sank into his friend's mind.
He shot his handkerchief up his cuff, and turned to her with eyes that lightly mocked the agonized appeal of the young face. "French blood is delightful quicksilver and champagne. You will enliven me, I promise you." "But the marriage it is not legal, monsieur," she said desperately, summoning all her courage. "Tewfick Pasha has no right to give me to you "
And as for the widow she must have been in no end of trouble with a dead man and a wrecked expedition and a baby on her hands, and Tewfick may have offered himself as a grateful solution to her. You'd be surprised at the things I've heard. And if she looked like her picture Tewfick probably laid himself out to be lovely to her.... I rather like the chap, myself." "I love him," Ryder snorted.
"I should like to get as near as possible to the date if it is not too much trouble.... The father died about fifteen years ago and the mother was married to you soon after?" "Really, monsieur, you " Tewfick was frankly restive. "I know nothing of the father," he said sullenly. "And as to the child's death how can one recall after these years?
Tewfick Pasha was at one side of the room, filling his match case. He was in evening dress, a ribbon of some order across a rather swelling shirt bosom, a red fez upon his dark head. At his daughter's entrance he turned quickly, with so sharp a gleam from his full, somewhat protuberant black eyes that her guilty heart fairly turned over in her.
The sound of that soft, hidden water added to her feeling of isolation and remoteness from everything that had been her life before she thought fleetingly, almost indifferently of her friends, Azima, who to-day had crowned her for happiness, and fond, foolish old Miriam and Madame de Coulevain and Tewfick Pasha, weakly cruel, but amiable; she thought of them all, as unreal figures from whom she had long taken leave.
He forgot the lovely image of the French miniature, and remembering Tewfick's rounded eyes and olive features he thought of the veiled girl most illogically, for he knew that Tewfick was not her father as some bold-eyed, warm-skinned image of base allure. Sorrowfully he shook his head over his friend. He determined to protect him and to protect this girl's innocence of his behavior.
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