a great ruby burned.
Her garments were held by fibulae of iron and bone, cheaply made; around
her neck were many strings of beads, some of carved jet, some of silver,
some of colored glass. In her grotesqueness and impassivity she might
have posed as a graven goddess of some unholy rite. In the sight of her,
also, was something so unexpected that Eldris stopped and stared.

"Will you close that door?" said the woman. Her voice was low-pitched
and clear and very sweet, with no hint of coarseness in its modulations.
Coming from such a bulk it was surprising--more, it was startling.
Eldris obeyed, taken wholly aback. "Now come hither."

Eldris came.

The woman's heavy-lidded eyes settled on her as a vulture settles on its
prey, devouring her, line by line, feature by feature, until, to her
surprise and discomfort, Eldris felt herself flushing as though she had
been under the eyes of a man.

"Whence come you?" said the soft voice; so commonplace a question and so
casually asked, that Eldris was nearly betrayed into indiscretion. She
caught herself and said instead:

"From Londinium."

"And you are--" The woman looked her over again. "Perhaps a dancer, or
maybe a mime, running away because your master misused you?"

"A dancer--yes, that is it," said Eldris, catching at the invention.
"And my master misused me, and I ran away. Now I seek the wine-shop--"

The woman laughed, a silvery tinkle of mirth.

"Child, spare your conscience!" she said lightly. "See, let me tell you
how it lies with you. Whence come you? From a great house to the
southward, where one Hito rules with a rod of fear. What are you? A
slave, my dear, and a runaway, with your life, in consequence, forfeit
and lying this moment in my hand. Some one helped you to get away, and
bade you wait for him at the wine-shop of this master Nicodemus, for
whom you clamor. How dare you put me and mine in jeopardy, girl, by
thrusting yourself upon us? Know you not the penalty visited on those
who harbor fugitive slaves?"

Eldris started back from her, gray and pinched with fear. How did the
woman know? Who had told her? Eldris could not guess; knew nothing but
that her life indeed lay in the fat jewelled hands resting on the
woman's knees.

But the latter's tone changed. Perhaps there was in her something of the
feline; the instinct of the cat to gambol with its prey. She laughed
again.

"Nay, child!" she said gently. "I did but sport with thee. And I am
so