Mrs. Hendricks, thrusting in the final pins, paid not the slightest attention and Madame de Coulevain displayed interest only in the packages.  If she saw the stiffening of the girl’s face and the rigid aversion of her eyes from the old nurse’s adulation she gave no sign.

Towards Aimee’s moods madame preserved a calm and sensible detachment.  Never had she invited confidence, and for all the young girl’s charm she had never taken her to her heart in the place of that absent daughter.  As if jealously she had held herself aloof from such devotion.

Perhaps in Aimee’s indulged and petted childhood, with a fond pasha extolling her small triumphs, her dances, her score at tennis at the legation, madame found a bitter contrast to the lot of that lonely child in France.  Certainly there was nothing in Aimee’s life then to invite compassion, and later, during those hard, mutinous months of the girl’s first veiling and seclusion, she had not tried to soften the inevitable for her with a useless compassion.

So now, perceiving this marriage as one more step in the irresistible march of destiny for her charge, she overlooked the youthful fretting and offered the example of her own unmoved acceptance.

“What diamonds!” she said now admiringly, holding up a pin, and, examining the card.  “From Seniha Hanum—­the cousin of Hamdi Bey.”

A moment more she held up the pin but the girl would not give it a look.

“And this, from the same jeweler’s,” continued madame, while the dressmaker was unfastening the frock, aided by Miriam, anxious that no scratch should mar that milk-white skin.

“How droll—­the box is wrapped in cloth, a cloth of plaid.”

Aimee spun about.  The dress fell, a glistening circle at her feet, and with regardless haste she tripped over it to madame.

“How—­strange!” she said breathlessly.

A plaid ...  A Scotch plaid.  Memories of an erect, tartan-draped young figure, of a thin, bronzed face and dark hair where a tilted cap sat rakishly ... memories of smiling, boyish eyes, darkening with sudden emotion ... memories of eager lips....

She took the box from madame.  Within the cloth lay a jeweler’s case and within the case a locket of heavily ornamented gold.

Her heart beating, she opened it.  For a moment she did not understand.  Her own face—­her own face smiling back.  Yet unfamiliar, that oddly piled hair, that black velvet ribbon about the throat....

Murmuring, madame shared her wonder.

It was Miriam’s cry of recognition that told them.

“Thy mother—­the grace of Allah upon her!—­It is thy mother!  Eh, those bright eyes, that long, dark hair that I brushed the many hot nights upon the roof!”

“But you are her image, Aimee,” murmured the Frenchwoman, but half understanding the nurse’s rapid gutturals, and then, “Your father’s gift?”

With the box in her hands the girl turned from them, fearful of the tell-tale color in her cheeks.  “But whose else—­his thought, of course,” she stammered.