"You cannot stay here," was the answer, when Paul had finished speaking.
"I will pay you, and that handsomely, for the trouble we give."
"It's not a question of money. This house is not mine, and I cannot open it to whom I will. I have received strict orders from the Master to admit no one during his absence. If he should return and find me entertaining strangers, I should suffer."
"Your master, whoever he may be, never meant that you should turn away at midnight a young lady exhausted by a twelve hours' wandering in the forest without food. I ask not for myself, but for her. It is but for a single night."
"A single hour would be too long."
Paul stood dismayed by the old man's churlishness. He pictured Barbara's look of distress on announcing that he had brought her on a bootless errand.
"You a Greek," he cried, "to refuse hospitality to an Englishman, whose uncle fought for Greece—"
This appeal wrought a remarkable change in the old man.
"What do you say you are?"
"An Englishman, nephew of Colonel Graysteel, commandant of the British forces at Corfu, and—"