as trying to rescue the girl for her French family.
She _is_ French and Tewfick Pasha is only--"

"And what is that to me? Do I--" the bey broke off and then turned
to the silent girl who stood leaning towards them, a trembling ghost
in white.

"And you, my little one," he murmured sardonically with a savage
irony of restraint, "you, the little dove secluded from the world,
who trembled at a kiss, the crystal vase who had never reflected the
blush of love, whose virginal praises I was chanting when I was so
oddly assaulted, do you support this idiot's story?"

Mechanically her head moved in assent, her eyes, dilated with fear,
were like the dark, fascinated eyes of some helpless bird.

"You never saw this young man?" the bey pursued. "And yet you were
ready to run off with him--a pretty character you give yourself, my
snowdrop!--and you liked his eyes and hastened to obey?"

Aimee was silent. From his ignominy upon the floor Ryder hastened to
interpose.

"It is true she had never seen me, but I had already written to her
and acquainted her with the story. I tried to reach her first
through her father but that was useless so I resorted to these
desperate means."

"Oh you wrote! And you told her you would be here, and murder her
husband--"

"I told her nothing of the kind. She didn't know that I was coming
until I spoke to her here, and then she had no idea that I was going
to wait and carry her off--"

"In the name of Allah! Do you take me for a dolt, an ass? You, with
your writing and your masquerade and your secrets! Do any families
try to recover their relatives with such means? Daughter or
step-daughter, it is nothing to me--"

"But it is true," Aimee insisted, in a trembling voice. "My father
was Paul Delcasse--"

"_Yahrak Kiddisak man rabbabk_--curse the man who brought thee up!
Delcasse or devil, it is Tewfick Pasha who is your step-father, your
guardian, who gave you to me for wife--what has your genealogy to
do with this affront upon my honor?"

"But he did not intend to affront your honor--only to aid the family
in France--"

"I ask you again, do I resemble an ass that you should put such a
burden of lies upon me? As if I did not know why young men risked
their lives, in the dead of night, in other men's rooms! If I did
not know what turns their brains to mush and their hearts to leading
strings! And you--you--you little white rose of seclusion--!"

His venom leaped out at her in his voice.