Ryder nodded, suddenly busy with his cigarette.
"Where is she, now? In Cairo? That's luck, man!... And you say she's like?"
"It's an uncommon face." McLean bent over it again. "I fancied the artist had just been making a bit of beauty, but if there's a girl like that--! Fancy stumbling on that!... But where is she? And what name does she go by?"
"Oh, her name--she doesn't know her own, of course." Ryder paused uncertainly. "She's in Cairo," he began again vaguely. "She'd be just about the right age--eighteen or so. She--she's had awf'ly hard luck." Distressfully he hesitated.
The shrewd eyes of McLean dwelt upon him in sorrowful silence. "Eh, Jock," he said at last, with mock scandal scarcely veiling rebuke. "I did not know that you knew any of that sort--the poor, wee lost thing.... Tell me, now--"
"Tell you you're off your chump," said Jack rudely. "She's no lost lamb. Fact is, she's never spoken to a man--except myself." He rather enjoyed the start this gave McLean after his insinuations. It helped him on with his story.
"The girl doesn't know her own name at all, I gather. 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.
McLean knew--slightly--Tewfick Pasha. He knew--supremely--the inviolable seclusion of a daughter of such a household. He knew the utter impossibility of any man's speech with her.
Ryder's telling him was a sketchy performance. He mentioned the girl's appearance at the masquerade and their acquaintance. He touched lightly upon her attempted flight and his pursuit. Even more lightly he passed over those lingering moments at her garden gate and the exchange of confidences.
"She said that her dead mother had been French. And that her name was her mother's--Aimée. So there is--"
"But the likeness, man--her face? She never unveiled to you?"
It was at this point that Ryder began to lose his relish of McLean's astonishment.