"'Absolutely.'
"'Then, Mademoiselle, I have but one thing to do. Set a thief to catch a thief. I will carry you on board The Fancy, and I will hold you as a hostage until Hermann is returned.'
"'I was about to propose it to you,' she said. 'At that price papa will send back your friend.'"
Here I interrupted John Harris' story.
"Oh, well! you do not admire the poor, young girl who loves you enough to give herself into your hands?"
"A fine affair!" he replied. "She wished to save that honest man, her father, and she well knew that once war was declared we would not let him escape. I promised to treat her with all the respect a gallant man ought to treat a woman. She wept until we reached Piraeus. I consoled her as best I could. She murmured: 'I am a lost girl!' I demonstrated to her by 'A' plus 'B' that she would find herself again. I made her get out of the carriage. I helped her and the servant into my boat, which now awaits us below. I wrote to the old brigand an explicit letter, and I sent an old woman with a little message to Dimitri.
"Since that time the beautiful weeper enjoys undisputed possession of my apartments. Orders were given that she was to be treated like the daughter of a king. I waited until Monday evening for her father's response; then my patience failed me; I returned to my first plan; I took my pistols; I notified my friends, and you know the rest. Now it is your turn; you ought to have a whole volume to recount."
"I must first speak to the King."
I approached him and said to him in a low tone: "I do not know why I told you that Photini was in love with John Harris. Fear must have turned my head. I have been talking with him, and I swear to you, on the head of my father, that she is as indifferent to him as if he had never spoken to her."
The old man thanked me with a motion of the hand, and I went back to John Harris, and related my adventures with Mary-Ann. "Bravo!" he exclaimed. "I find that the romance is not complete on account of the absence of a little love. A sufficient amount will do no harm."