Saint Hubert paused a moment and nodded towards the Sheik. "Even after
the child's birth she refused to give any account of herself. In that
she was as firm as a rock; in everything else she was the frailest,
gentlest little creature imaginable. She was very small and slender,
with quantities of soft dark hair and beautiful great dark eyes that
looked like a frightened fawn's. I have heard my father describe her
many times, and I have seen the water-colour sketch he made of her--he
was quite an amateur. Ahmed has it locked away somewhere. She nearly
died when the baby was born, and she never recovered her strength. She
made no complaint and never spoke of herself, and seemed quite content
as long as the child was with her. She was a child herself in a great
number of ways. It never seemed to occur to her that there was anything
odd in her continued residence in the Sheik's camp. She had a tent and
servants of her own, and the headman's wife was devoted to her. So were
the rest of the camp for that matter. There was an element of the
mysterious in her advent that had taken hold of the superstitious
Arabs, and the baby was looked upon as something more than human and
was adored by all the tribe. The Sheik himself, who had never looked
twice at a woman before in his life, became passionately attached to
her.
My father says that he has never seen a man so madly in love as
Ahmed Ben Hassan was with the strange white girl who had come so oddly
into his life. He repeatedly implored her to marry him, and even my
father, who has a horror of mixed marriages, was impelled to admit that
any woman might have been happy with Ahmed Ben Hassan. She would not
consent, though she would give no reason for her refusal, and the
mystery that surrounded her remained as insolvable during the two years
that she lived after the baby's birth as it had been on the day of her
arrival. And her refusal made no difference with the Sheik. His
devotion was wonderful. When she died my father was again visiting the
camp. She knew that she was dying, and a few days before the end she
told them her pitiful little history. She was the only daughter of one
of the oldest noble houses in Spain, as poor as they were noble, and
she had been married when she was seventeen to Lord Glencaryll, who had
seen her with her parents in Nice. She had been married without any
regard to her own wishes, and though she grew to love her husband she
was always afraid of him. He had a terrible temper that was very easily
roused, and, in those days, he also periodically drank a great deal
more than was good for him, and when under the influence of drink
behaved more like a devil than a man. She was very young and
gauche, failing often to do what was required of her from mere
nervousness. He was exigent and made no allowance for her youth and
inexperience, and her life was one long torture. And yet in spite of it
all she loved him. Even in speaking of it she insisted that the fault
was hers, that the trouble was due to her stupidity, glossing over his
brutality; in fact, it was not from her, but from inquiries that he
made after her death, that my father learned most of what her life had
been.