ew York.

"Stop!" she cried in that perfect English which is not only a rare
experience but a pleasant adventure, "what new horror is this?"

To Prince Tabnit's face, as he looked at her, came once more that
indefinable change--only this time nearer and more intimately
explainable, as if something ethereal, trained to delicate lines,
like smoke, should suddenly shape itself to a menace. St. George saw
the woman step close to the dais, he saw Olivia's eyes questioning
him, and in the hurried rising of the peers and of the High Council
he heard Rollo's voice in his ear:

"It's a gr'it go, sir," observed Rollo respectfully, "the woman has
things to tell, sir, as people generally don't know. She's flew the
coop at the place she was in--it seems she's been shut up some'eres
in America, sir; an' she got 'old of the capting of a tramp boat o'
some kind--one o' them boats as smells intoxicating round the
'atches--an' she give 'im an' the mate a 'andful o' jewelry that
she'd on 'er when she was took in an' 'ad someways contrived to 'ang
on to, an' I'm blessed hif she wasn't able fer to steer fer the
island, sir--we took 'er aboard the yacht only this mornin' with 'er
'air down her back, an' we've brought 'er on here. An' she says--men
can be gr'it beasts, sir, an' no manner o' mistake," concluded Rollo
fervently.

And a little hoarse voice said in St. George's ear:

"Mr. St. George, sir--we ain't late, are we? We been flirtin' de
ger-avel up dat ka-liff since de car-rack o' day."

And there was Bennietod, with an edge of an old horse pistol
showing beneath his cuff; and, round-eyed and alert as a bird newly
alighted on a stranger sill, Little Cawthorne stood; and the sight
put strength into St. George, and so did Little Cawthorne's words:

"I didn't know whether they'd let us in or not," he said, "unless we
had on a plaited decollette, with biases down the back."

Clearly and confidently in the silent room rang the voice of the
woman confronting Prince Tabnit, and her eyes did not leave his
face. St. George was struck with the change in her since that day in
the Reformatory chapel. Then she had been like a wild, alien thing
in dumb distress; now she was unchained and native. Her first words
explained why, in the extreme dilemma in which St. George had last
seen her, she had yet remained mute.

"I release myself," she cried, "from my oath of silence, though
until to-day I have spoken only to those who helped me to come