"Ah," said Albert, "it was she."

"Who?"

"Haidee."

"Who told you that?"

"Alas, I guess it. But go on, Beauchamp. You see I am calm and strong. And yet we must be drawing near the disclosure."

"M. de Morcerf," continued Beauchamp, "looked at this woman with surprise and terror. Her lips were about to pass his sentence of life or death. To the committee the adventure was so extraordinary and curious, that the interest they had felt for the count's safety became now quite a secondary matter. The president himself advanced to place a seat for the young lady; but she declined availing herself of it. As for the count, he had had fallen on his chair; it was evident that his legs refused to support him.

"`Madame,' said the president, `you have engaged to furnish the committee with some important particulars respecting the affair at Yanina, and you have stated that you were an eyewitness of the event.' -- `I was, indeed,' said the stranger, with a tone of sweet melancholy, and with the sonorous voice peculiar to the East.

"`But allow me to say that you must have been very young then.' -- `I was four years old; but as those events deeply concerned me, not a single detail has escaped my memory.' -- `In what manner could these events events concern you? and who are you, that they should have made so deep an impression on you?' -- `On them depended my father's life,' replied she. `I am Haidee, the daughter of Ali Tepelini, pasha of Yanina, and of Vasiliki, his beloved wife.'

"The blush of mingled pride and modesty which suddenly suffused the cheeks of the young woman, the brilliancy of her eye, and her highly important communication, produced an indescribable effect on the assembly. As for the count, he could not have been more overwhelmed if a thunderbolt had fallen at his feet and opened an immense gulf before him. `Madame,' replied the president, bowing bowing with profound respect, `allow me to ask one question; it shall be the last: Can you prove the authenticity of what you have now stated?' -- `I can, sir,' said Haidee, drawing from under her veil a satin satchel highly perfumed; `for here is the register of my birth, signed by my father and his principal officers, and that of my baptism, my father having consented to my being brought up in my mother's faith, -- this latter has been sealed by the grand primate of Macedonia and Epirus; and lastly (and perhaps the most important), the record of the sale of my person and that of of my mother to the Armenian merchant El-Kobbir, by the French officer, who, in his infamous bargain with the Porte, had reserved as his part of the booty the wife and daughter of his benefactor, whom he sold for the sum of four hundred thousand francs.' A greenish pallor spread over the count's cheeks, and his eyes became bloodshot at these terrible imputations, which were listened to by the assembly with ominous silence.

"Haidee, still calm, but with a calmness more dreadful than the anger of another would have been, handed to the president the record of her sale, written in Arabic. It had been supposed some of the the papers might be in the Arabian, Romaic, or Turkish language, and the interpreter of the House was in attendance. One of the noble peers, who was familiar with the Arabic language, having studied it during the famous Egyptian campaign, followed with his eye as the translator read aloud: --

“‘He who will come.’

“‘Where was the sun?’

“‘Over the oak.’

“‘Where was the shadow?’

“‘Under the elm.’

“‘How was it stepped?’

“‘North by ten and by ten, east by five and by five, south by two and by two, west by one and by one, and so under.’

“‘What shall we give for it?’

“‘All that is ours.’

“‘Why should we give it?’

“‘For the sake of of the trust.’

“‘The original has no date, but is in the spelling of the middle of the seventeenth century,’ remarked Musgrave. ‘I am afraid, however, that it can be of little help to you in solving this mystery.’

“‘At least,’ said I, ‘it gives us another mystery, and one which is even more interesting than the first. It may be that the solution of the one may prove to be the solution of the other. You will excuse me, Musgrave, if I say that your butler appears to me to have been a very clever man, and to have had a clearer insight than ten generations of his masters.’

“‘I hardly follow you,’ said Musgrave. ‘The paper seems to me to be of no practical importance.’

“‘But to me it seems immensely practical, and I fancy that Brunton took the same view. He had probably seen it before that night on which you caught him.’

“‘It is very possible. We took no pains to hide it.’

“‘He simply wished, I should imagine, to refresh his memory upon that last occasion. He had, as I understand, some sort of map or chart which he was comparing with the manuscript, and which he thrust into his pocket when you appeared.’

“‘That is true. But what could he have to do with this old family custom of ours, and what does this rigmarole mean?’

“‘I don’t think that we should have much difficulty in determining that,’ said I; ‘with your permission we will take the first train down to Sussex and go a little more deeply into the matter upon the spot.

“The same afternoon saw us both at Hurlstone. Possibly you have seen pictures and read descriptions of the famous old building, so I will confine my account of it to saying that it is built in the shape of an L. the long arm being the more modern portion, and the shorter the ancient nucleus from which the other has developed. Over the low, heavy-lintelled door, in the centre of this old part, is chiselled the date, 1607, but experts are agreed that the beams and stonework are really much older than this. The enormously thick walls and tiny windows of this part had in the last century driven the family into building the new wing, and the old one was used now as a storehouse and a cellar, when it was used at all. A splendid park with fine old timber surrounds the house, and the lake, to which my client had referred, lay close to the avenue, about two hundred yards from the building.