urse, Kingsley Bey--I quite understand. I thought you
Lord Selden, an English gentleman. You are--" she made an impatient
gesture--"well, you are English still!"

He was hit hard. The suggestion of her voice was difficult to bear.

"I am not so ungentlemanly as you think. I meant to tell you--almost at
once. I thought that as an old friend I might wait a moment or two. The
conversation got involved, and it grew harder every minute. Then Foulik
Pasha came-and now...."

She showed no signs of relenting. "It was taking advantage of an
old-acquaintance. Against your evil influence here I have been working
for years, while you have grown rich out of the slavery I detest. You
will pardon my plain speaking, but this is not London, and one has had
to learn new ways in this life here. I do not care for the acquaintance
of slave-drivers, I have no wish to offer them hospitality. The world
is large and it belongs to other people, and one has to endure much when
one walks abroad; but this house is my own place, a little spot all my
own, and I cherish it. There are those who come to the back door, and
they are fed and clothed and sent away by the hand of charity; there are
those who come to the front door, and I welcome them gladly--all that
I have is theirs; there are those who come to a side door, when no one
sees, and take me unawares, and of them I am afraid, their presence I
resent. My doors are not open to slave-drivers."

"What is the difference between the letter from the slave-driver's hand
and the slave-driver himself?"

She started and flushed deeply. She took the letter slowly from her
pocket and laid it on the table.

"I thought it a letter from a man who was openly doing wrong, and
who repented a little of his wrongdoing. I thought it a letter from a
stranger, from an Englishman who, perhaps, had not had such advantages
of birth and education as came to you."

"Yet you had a good opinion of the letter. There seemed no want of
education and all that there--won't you be reasonable, and let me
explain? Give me half a chance."

"I do not see that explanation can mend anything. The men you sent me
to free: that was a-well, call it a manoeuvre, to achieve what, I cannot
tell. Is it not so? The men are not free. Is it not so?"

"I am afraid they are not free," he answered, smiling in spite of
himself.

"Your coming here was a manoeuvre also--for what purpose I do not know.
Yet it was a manoeuvre, and I am--or was