It Happened in Egypt

								

famous lecturing tour and visit to his birthplace on our green island;
and though he was more than twice her age, the fascination he had for
Biddy surprised few who knew him.
He was eloquent, in a fiery way. He had extraordinary eyes, and it was
his pride to resemble portraits of Lord Byron. After an acquaintance of
a month, Biddy married O'Brien (I had just gone up to Oxford at the
time, or I should have tried not to let it happen), went to America
with him, and voluntarily ceased to exist for her friends.
Poor girl, she must have had an awakening! He had posed as a bachelor;
but after her marriage she found out (and the world with her) that he
was a widower with one child, a little girl he had practically
abandoned. Biddy adopted her, though the mother had been a rather
undesirable Frenchwoman; and now when I saw her smiling at the tall
white girl on the Laconia, I had thought for an instant that Biddy
and her stepdaughter might be in flight together. O'Brien was a
drunkard, as well as a demagogue; and not long after Brigit's flitting
with him there was a scandal about the accepting of bribes from
politicians on the opposing side, apparently his greatest enemies; but
a minor scandal compared to what came some years afterward. O'Brien's
name was implicated in the blowing up of the World-Republican
Building in Washington, and the wrecking of Senator Marlowe's special
train after his speech against socialist interests, but the coward
turned informer against his friends and associates in the secret
society of which he had been a leader, and saved himself by sending
them to prison. From that day until his death he lived the life of a
hunted animal flying from the hounds of vengeance. Brigit stood by him
in spite of threats against her life as well as his, and the life of
the child. Since then, though she answered none of our letters, we had
heard rumours. The girl Esm�, whom the avengers had threatened to
kidnap, was supposed to be hidden in some convent-school in Europe. As
for Brigit, she was said to be training for a hospital nurse: reported
to have become a missionary in India, China, and one or two other
countries; seen on the music-hall stage, and traced to Johannesburg,
where she had married a diamond-merchant; yet here she was on board the
Laconia, unchanged in looks, or nature, and the guest of a much
paragraphed, much proposed to American heiress en route to Egypt.
While Brigit was telling me the real story of her last two years, as
governess, companion, teacher of music, and journalist, Miss Gilder
regarded us sidewise from amid her bodyguard of young men. Evidently
she was dying to know who was the acquaintance her darling Biddy had
picked up in mid-Mediterranean the moment her back was turned; and at
last, unable to restrain herself longer, she made use of some magic
trick to attach the band of youths to her aunt. Then, separating
herself with almost indecent haste from the group, she marched up to