“‘No,’ I replied, and I expressed my contempt of that infidel race in suitable words.

“The old woman only laughed and removed her veil.  She showed me an old wizened face in which there was not a remnant of good looks—­a face worn and wrinkled with hard living and great sorrows.

“‘You are English,’ she said, ’and since I am English too, I thought that I would like to speak once more with one of my own countrymen.’

“I no longer doubted.  I took the hand she held out to me and—­

“‘But what are you doing here in Mecca?’ I asked.

“‘I live in Mecca,’ she replied quietly.  ’I have lived here for twenty years.’

“I looked round that bare and sordid little room with horror.  What strange fate had cast her up there?  I asked her, and she told me her story.  Guess what it was!”

Ralston shook his head.

“I can’t imagine.”

Hatch turned to Shere Ali.

“Can you?” he asked, and even as he asked he saw that a change had come over the young Prince’s mood.  He was no longer oppressed with envy and discontent.  He was leaning forward with parted lips and a look in his eyes which Hatch had not seen that evening—­a look as if hope had somehow dared to lift its head within him.  And there was more than a look of hope; there was savagery too.

“No.  I want to hear,” replied Shere Ali.  “Go on, please!  How did the Englishwoman come to Mecca?”

“She was a governess in the family of an officer at Cawnpore when the Mutiny broke out, more than forty years ago,” said Hatch.

Ralston leaned back in his chair with an exclamation of horror.  Shere Ali said nothing.  His eyes rested intently and brightly upon Hatch’s face.  Under the table, and out of sight, his fingers worked convulsively.

“She was in that room,” continued Hatch, “in that dark room with the other Englishwomen and children who were murdered.  But she was spared.  She was very pretty, she told me, in her youth, and she was only eighteen when the massacre took place.  She was carried up to the hills and forced to become a Mohammedan.  The man who had spared her married her.  He died, and a small chieftain in the hills took her and married her, and finally brought her out with him when he made the pilgrimage to Mecca.  While he was at Mecca, however, he fell ill, and in his turn he died.  She was left alone.  She had a little money, and she stayed.  Indeed, she could not get away.  A strange story, eh?”

And Hatch leaned back in his chair, and once more lighted his cigar which for a second time had gone out.

“You didn’t bring her back?” exclaimed Ralston.

“She wouldn’t come,” replied Hatch.  “I offered to smuggle her out of Mecca, but she refused.  She felt that she wouldn’t and couldn’t face her own people again.  She should have died at Cawnpore, and she did not die.  Besides, she was old; she had long since grown accustomed to her life, and in England she had long since been given up for dead.  She would not even tell me her real name.  Perhaps she ought to be fetched away.  I don’t know.”