f your baseness. Oh!"

He stretched out suppliant hands to her; there were tears now in his
eyes. "Of your charity, Rosamund...." he was beginning, when at last
Oliver intervened:

"I think you are wearying the lady," he said, and stirred him with his
foot. "Relate to us instead some more of your astounding accidents.
They are more diverting. Elucidate the accident, by which you had me
kidnapped to be sold into slavery. Tell us of the accident by which
you succeeded to my property. Expound to the full the accidental
circumstances of which throughout you have been the unfortunate victim.
Come, man, ply your wits. 'Twill make a pretty tale."

And then came Jasper to announce that Ali waited with the brazier and
the heated manacles.

"They are no longer needed," said Oliver. "Take this slave hence with
you. Bid Ali to take charge of him, and at dawn to see him chained to
one of the oars of my galeasse. Away with him."

Lionel rose to his feet, his face ashen. "Wait! Ah, wait! Rosamund!" he
cried.

Oliver caught him by the nape of his neck, spun him round, and flung him
into the arms of Jasper. "Take him away!" he growled, and Jasper took
the wretch by the shoulders and urged him out, leaving Rosamund and
Oliver alone with the truth under the stars of Barbary.

CHAPTER XII. THE SUBTLETY OF FENZILEH

Oliver considered the woman for a long moment as she sat half-crouching
on the divan, her hands locked, her face set and stony, her eyes
lowered. He sighed gently and turned away. He paced to the parapet and
looked out upon the city bathed in the white glare of the full risen
moon. There arose thence a hum of sound, dominated, however, by the
throbbing song of a nightingale somewhere in his garden and the croaking
of the frogs by the pool in the valley.

Now that truth had been dragged from its well, and tossed, as it were,
into Rosamund's lap, he felt none of the fierce exultation which he had
conceived that such an hour as this must bring him. Rather, indeed, was
he saddened and oppressed. To poison the unholy cup of joy which he
had imagined himself draining with such thirsty zest there was that
discovery of a measure of justification for her attitude towards him in
her conviction that his disappearance was explained by flight.

He was weighed down by a sense that he had put himself entirely in the
wrong; that in his vengeance he had overreached himself; and he found
the fruits of it, which had seemed so d