"What?" I asked, almost imperiously.
"I dare not say it. I may be guilty of the sin of detraction."
"Nay, speak, I beg of you. The eyes are lovely, you say, but——"
"Have an untruthful expression."
"Ah, good heavens, don't say so!"
My heart sank as she spoke, and I sighed deeply.
"I have seen such eyes and brows once before, and I remember the sorrow they wrought."
The paragraph which I had read in the London morning paper, on board the Ganges, in the harbour of Valetta—that fulsome paragraph, at which Berkeley had smiled so complacently and covertly—came to my memory word for word now. Was it possible that the journal was true, and Louisa false? After an uncomfortable pause, I related to the sister the strange episode which occurred at the house of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig.
"Magique!" she exclaimed, while her large eyes became larger still, and she crossed herself three several times with great earnestness. "O Sainte Dame! you tried the art of the great fiend, did you?"
"Who—I? Not at all! How could I? Don't imagine anything so absurd. The man is only a trickster, like Houdin or Herr Frickel."