Lionel made a noble gesture of dissent. "I am sure," he said
chivalrously, "it is all it should have been--"

She interrupted with some acerbity. "That is not my reason. I have
nothing either to excuse or condone. But as I have already put you to
considerable trouble, and mean (if you are willing to help, me) to put
you to still more, it is but fair that you should know all."

Lionel bowed as gracefully as he could.

"I will make it as short as I can," she continued. "There is much that
is strange and improbable in it, but I beg you to keep silent and
forbear to question me until the end. I was born in a little village on
the southeast coast. I was a twin, the other child being a sister, the
replica of myself. My mother died when I was only two years old. When I
was seventeen I was kidnaped by a tribe of Rumanian gipsies who wished
to be revenged on my father. He had prosecuted some of them for
poaching on his land. I was smuggled to the coast, and then across to
the continent.

"I do not mean to waste time in lingering over details immaterial to my
purpose. Were I writing a book I could fill a volume with the strange
incidents of my abduction and wanderings. But as time is short I will
come to the point at once. We journeyed by slow stages across the
continent, and of course I was jealously guarded the whole time. My
English dress was burned, my skin stained a brownish hue. Whenever
observation threatened I was immured in a small black hole, made at the
end of one of the caravans by a false partition. The police failed to
trace me, for the gipsies had been cunning enough to stay some weeks in
England after my capture to throw my relatives off the scent, keeping a
strict watch upon me. So with this inadequate resume you must realize
that we have passed through Germany, Austria, Rumania, Bulgaria and
Rumelia. We crossed the Turkish frontier, and I still had no plan of
escape. Oh, yes! I had tried--once! The threats they used on my
detection were more than enough to prevent me trying a second time.

"At last we reached Constantinople, where we stayed a night in a huge
caravansary. I was too well watched to be able to write a letter. The
next evening I was sold to a Turkish officer of the sultan's body-guard.
Blindfolded and gagged, I was put into a kind of sedan-chair under cover
of darkness and carried to his palace. I was escorted to a fine suite of
apartments, furnished in the eastern manner, but lit with electr