“And to think how that demure minx Janet has deceived me all these days and made me believe she was respectable! Oh, it is terrible.”
“Shut up!” said Allison, rudely.
“You’re a beast, that’s what you are!” retorted the old lady, white with fury, “and a fit brother for your designing sister. And to think that I’ve got myself mixed up with such a scandal. An American girl the inmate of a harem! What will be said when this news reaches New York? And Colonel Moore an officer of the great Metropolitan Construction Syndicate!”
“See here, Lucy,” warned her brother, “you keep mum until you know what you’re talking about. Janet is as good a girl as ever breathed.”
“Only de best gets into de khan’s harem,” remarked David, consolingly.
Aunt Lucy turned upon him like a tigress.
“It’s your doing, I’ll be bound,” she cried. “You’re a traitor!”
David winced a little, and studied the pattern in the rug.
“Now,” said the doctor, “it strikes me you’re getting nearer to the truth, except that David is too much of a fool to be a scoundrel, and so may escape suspicion. But I’m inclined to think there has been treachery in some quarter, and that Janet has been forcibly seized by the Khan. I wish there was an American or English consul in this forsaken town.”
“Her letter says she went willingly,” snapped Aunt Lucy, and the Colonel groaned at the suggestion.