"We came to a town, and my nurse placed before me a mirror. I did not
recognize myself. In this town we rested, obscure, till the letter there
reached me by which I learned that I was the offspring of love, and
enriched by the care of a father recently dead. Is it not clear that
Louis Grayle was this father?"

"If so, was the woman Ayesha your mother?"

"The letter said that 'my mother had died in my infancy.' Nevertheless,
the care with which Ayesha had tended me induced a suspicion that made me
ask her the very question you put. She wept when I asked her, and said,
'No, only my nurse. And now I needed a nurse no more.' The day after I
received the letter which announced an inheritance that allowed me to vie
with the nobles of Europe, this woman left me, and went back to her
tribe."

"Have you never seen her since?"

Margrave hesitated a moment, and then answered, though with seeming
reluctance, "Yes, at Damascus. Not many days after I was borne to that
city by the strangers who found me half-dead on their road, I woke one
morning to find her by my side. And she said, 'In joy and in health you
did not need me. I am needed now."'

"Did you then deprive yourself of one so devoted? You have not made this
long voyage--from Egypt to Australia--alone,--you, to whom wealth gave no
excuse for privation?"

"The woman came with me; and some chosen attendants. I engaged to