p you?" Marco asked, and he kneeled down again and carefully
unfastened her shoe and withdrew it from her foot. It was a slender
and delicate foot in a silk stocking, and she bent and gently touched
and rubbed it.

"No," she said, when she raised herself, "I do not think it is a
sprain. Now that the shoe is off and the foot rests on the cushion, it
is much more comfortable, much more. Thank you, thank you. If you had
not been passing I might have had a dangerous fall."

"I am very glad to have been able to help you," Marco answered, with an
air of relief. "Now I must go, if you think you will be all right."

"Don't go yet," she said, holding out her hand. "I should like to know
you a little better, if I may. I am so grateful. I should like to
talk to you. You have such beautiful manners for a boy," she ended,
with a pretty, kind laugh, "and I believe I know where you got them
from."

"You are very kind to me," Marco answered, wondering if he did not
redden a little. "But I must go because my father will--"

"Your father would let you stay and talk to me," she said, with even a
prettier kindliness than before. "It is from him you have inherited
your beautiful manner. He was once a friend of mine. I hope he is my
friend still, though perhaps he has forgotten me."

All that Marco had ever learned and all that he had ever trained
himself to remember, quickly rushed back upon him now, because he had a
clear and rapidly working brain, and had not lived the ordinary boy's
life. Here was a beautiful lady of whom he knew nothing at all but
that she had twisted her foot in the street and he had helped her back
into her house. If silence was still the order, it was not for him to
know things or ask questions or answer them. She might be the
loveliest lady in the world and his father her dearest friend, but,
even if this were so, he could best serve them both by obeying her
friend's commands with all courtesy, and forgetting no instruction he
had given.

"I do not think my father ever forgets any one," he answered.

"No, I am sure he does not," she said softly. "Has he been to Samavia
during the last three years?"

Marco paused a moment.

"Perhaps I am not the boy you think I am," he said. "My father has
never been to Samavia."

"He has not? But--you are Marco Loristan?"

"Yes. That is my name."

Suddenly she leaned forward and her long lovely eyes filled with fire.

"Then you are a Samavian, a