And Aimée must pay for it. He tried to think very quickly what could best clear her.
He fixed his eyes on those glittering eyes, staring down upon him.
"I realize I owe you an explanation," he said grimly. "If you will let me tell you--"
The bey turned to Aimée with a smile that was the lifting of a lip and the distention of his nostrils.
"This fool thinks he has the time to talk--his English."
Desperately Ryder grasped for his vernacular. "I want to tell you--why I came. This--this young lady doesn't know me."
Past the general he shot a look of warning at the girl.
"I was trying to get hold of her for her family in France--She is really a French girl. Tewfick Pasha is not her father but her--" he could not find the word and dropped into English. "Her step-father--do you understand? And he had no business to marry her off, so I tried to steal her for the French family. It was a mad attempt which has failed--but for which the young lady should not be blamed. She had never seen me before. She had no idea I was here."
After a pause, "A remarkable story," said the general distinctly. He turned about to the table and drank off the last of a glass of champagne, then wiped his mouth with the back of a hand that trembled.
He turned back to stand over his prostrate invader. "Now, you--you dog of Satan," he snarled in a sudden snapping of restraint, "how did you get here? Who admitted you?"
And at that, for all his trussed and helpless plight, Jack Ryder grinned. He moved his head slightly. "That blackbird of yours here."
"The very one. But he didn't know it--I was in that black mantle--and veil."
"Oh, the mantle, I had forgot. So you stole in, disguised, to violate my hospitality, to outrage my harem, to gaze upon the forbidden faces of women and to steal the bride--"
"I tell you I was trying to rescue the girl for her French family. She _is_ French and Tewfick Pasha is only--"
"And what is that to me? Do I--" the bey broke off and then turned to the silent girl who stood leaning towards them, a trembling ghost in white.
"And you, my little one," he murmured sardonically with a savage irony of restraint, "you, the little dove secluded from the world, who trembled at a kiss, the crystal vase who had never reflected the blush of love, whose virginal praises I was chanting when I was so oddly assaulted, do you support this idiot's story?"