"Lolla! What are you doing here?"

At the sight of the girl John had started, nervously. It was plain that
he did not feel secure; that he thought his pursuers might, even thus
early, have tracked him down, and, in the moment before he had
recognized Lolla, Bessie saw him quail, while his face whitened, so that
Bessie knew he was afraid.

That knowledge, somehow, comforted her vastly. It removed at once some
of the formidable quality which John had acquired in her eyes when he
stole Dolly after the fright that he must have had when the flashlight
powder exploded, almost in his face. But Bessie remembered that he had
plucked up his courage after that scare; the chances were that he would
do so again now.

But, if Bessie was afraid of the kidnapper, Lolla was not. She rose, and
faced him defiantly. Bessie thought there was something splendid about
the gypsy girl, and she wondered why John, with such a girl ready and
anxious to marry him, had been diverted from her by Dolly, charming
though she was.

"I have come to save you, John," said Lolla. "Where is the American girl
you stole from her friends!"

John started, evidently surprised by Lolla's knowledge of what he had
done, and said something, sharply, in the gypsy tongue, which Bessie, of
course, could not understand. Her question, it was plain, had
frightened, as well as startled him; but it had also made him very
angry. Lolla, however, did not seem to mind his anger. She faced him
boldly, without giving ground, although he had moved toward her with a