"But Jack, you—why were you hiding her—? Did you get her out?" stammered Jinny.
"The night of that reception. You see, I knew she was truly a French girl who had been stolen by Tewfick Pasha and brought up as his daughter—Oh, that's a long story, too! But at McLean's I had happened on the agents who were searching for her from her aunt in France, and so I knew.... And at the reception when I found she hated that marriage I stayed behind and—and managed to get her away,"—thus lightly did Ryder indicate the dangers of that night!—"so she could escape to France."
"Oh—France!" said Jinny.
She could be forgiven for the tone. She had been kept shamefully in the dark, misled, ignored.... She had been a catspaw, a bystander.
Not that she cared. Not that she would let them think for a minute that she cared....
But as for this talk of France—
Her eyes met the eyes of the girl in the mummy case. And Jinny found herself looking, not at the interloper, the enchantress, but at a very young, frightened girl, lost in a strange world, but resolved upon courage. She saw more than the men could see. She saw the loveliness, the helplessness, and she saw too the sensitive dignity, the delicate, defensive spirit....
Really, she was a child.
And to have gone through so much, dared such danger.... She remembered that dark, forbidding palace, the guarded doors, the hideous blacks—and that bright, smiling figure in its misty veil.... And now that little figure sat in its strange hiding place, confronting her with a lost child's eyes....
Into Jinny's bright gray eyes came a mist of tears. She was queerly moved. It was a mingled emotion, but if some drops for her own disconcertment were mingled with the warm prompting of pity, her compassion was none the less true.