is it?"

"In her bedroom," she said.

"Mrs. Forbes wishes it brought here." I turned back into the room. Mrs.
Forbes had gone deadly pale, but her eyes looked sullen, and her teeth
were clenched under her lips with an expression of stubbornness. The
maid brought the workbox. I walked, with it in my hands, up to the sofa
where she was seated.

"You remember this mark?" I asked; "I think neither of us can ever forget
it."

She did not answer by word, but there was a very intelligent gleam in her
blue eyes.

"Now," I continued, softly, "I promised your father to befriend you, and
I am not a man to forget a promise. But you must tell me the whole
simple truth."

I was compelled to reason with her, and to urge her for some time. I
confess I went so far as to remind her that there was an English consul
at Alexandria, to whom I could resort. At last she opened her stubborn
lips, and the whole story came out, mingled with sobs and showers of
tears.

She had been in love with Alfred, she said, and they were too poor to
marry, and papa would not hear of such a thing. She was always in want
of money, she was kept so short; and they promised to give her such a
great sum--a vast sum--five hundred pounds.

"But who bribed you?" I inquired.

A foreign gentleman whom she had met in London, called Monsieur Bonnard.
It was a French name, but she was not sure that he was a Frenchman. He
talked to her about her father being a surveyor in the post-office, and
asked her a great number of questions. A few weeks after, she met him in
their own town by accident, she and Mr. Forbes; and Alfred had a long
private talk with him, and they came to her, and told her she could help
them very much. They asked her if she could be brave enough to carry off
a little red box out of the travelling post-office, containing nothing
but papers. After a while she consented. When she had confessed so much
under compulsion, Mrs. Forbes seemed to take a pleasure in the narrative,
and went on fluently.

"We required papa's signature to the order, and we did not know how to
get it. Luckily he had a fit of the gout, and was very peevish; and I
had to read over a lot of official papers to him, and then he signed
them. One of the papers I read twice, and slipped the order into its
place after the second reading. I thought I should have died with
fright; but just then he was in great pain, and glad to get his work
over. I made an excuse th