she exclaimed, stamping her foot upon the earth. “Here is the Veiled Lady!”

At the word, up rose the bearded man in the Oriental robes, — the beautiful, the dark magician, who had bartered away his soul! He threw his arms around the Veiled Lady, and she was his bond-slave for evermore!

Zenobia, all this while, had been holding the piece of gauze, and so managed it as greatly to increase the dramatic effect of the legend at those points where the magic veil was to be described.

Arriving at the catastrophe, and uttering the fatal words, she flung the gauze over Priscilla’s head; and for an instant her auditors held their breath, half expecting, I verily believe, that the magician would start up through the floor, and carry off our poor little friend before our eyes.