em; still, if you will be
pleased to share our lodging with us (pointing to Luscinda) perhaps you
will have found worse accommodation in the course of your journey."

To this the veiled lady made no reply; all she did was to rise from her
seat, crossing her hands upon her bosom, bowing her head and bending her
body as a sign that she returned thanks. From her silence they concluded
that she must be a Moor and unable to speak a Christian tongue.

At this moment the captive came up, having been until now otherwise
engaged, and seeing that they all stood round his companion and that she
made no reply to what they addressed to her, he said, "Ladies, this
damsel hardly understands my language and can speak none but that of her
own country, for which reason she does not and cannot answer what has
been asked of her."

"Nothing has been asked of her," returned Luscinda; "she has only been
offered our company for this evening and a share of the quarters we
occupy, where she shall be made as comfortable as the circumstances
allow, with the good-will we are bound to show all strangers that stand
in need of it, especially if it be a woman to whom the service is
rendered."

"On her part and my own, senora," replied the captive, "I kiss your
hands, and I esteem highly, as I ought, the favour you have offered,
which, on such an occasion and coming from persons of your appearance,
is, it is plain to see, a very great one."

"Tell me, senor," said Dorothea, "is this lady a Christian or a Moor? for
her dress and her silence lead us to imagine that she is what we could
wish she was not."

"In dress and outwardly," said he, "she is a Moor, but at heart she is a
thoroughly good Christian, for she has the greatest desire to become
one."

"Then she has not been baptised?" returned Luscinda.

"There has been no opportunity for that," replied the captive, "since she
left Algiers, her native country and home; and up to the present she has
not found herself in any such imminent danger of death as to make it
necessary to baptise her before she has been instructed in all the
ceremonies our holy mother Church ordains; but, please God, ere long she
shall be baptised with the solemnity befitting her which is higher than
her dress or mine indicates."

By these words he excited a desire in all who heard him, to know who the
Moorish lady and the captive were, but no one liked to ask just then,
seeing that it was a fitter moment for helping the