“Ah,” said Albert, “it was she.”
“Who?”
“Haydée.”
“Who told you that?”
“Alas, I guess it. But go on, Beauchamp. You see I am calm and strong. And yet we must be drawing near the disclosure.”
“M. de Morcerf,” continued Beauchamp, “looked at this woman with surprise and terror. Her lips were about to pass his sentence of life or death. To the committee the adventure was so extraordinary and curious, that the interest they had felt for the count’s safety became now quite a secondary matter. The president himself advanced to place a seat for the young lady; but she declined availing herself of it. As for the count, he had fallen on his chair; it was evident that his legs refused to support him.
“‘Madame,’ said the president, ‘you have engaged to furnish the committee with some important particulars respecting the affair at Yanina, and you have stated that you were an eyewitness of the event.’—‘I was, indeed,’ said the stranger, with a tone of sweet melancholy, and with the sonorous voice peculiar to the East.
“‘But allow me to say that you must have been very young then.’—‘I was four years old; but as those events deeply concerned me, not a single detail has escaped my memory.’—‘In what manner could these events concern you? and who are you, that they should have made so deep an impression on you?’—‘On them depended my father’s life,’ replied she. ‘I am Haydée, the daughter of Ali Tepelini, pasha of Yanina, and of Vasiliki, his beloved wife.’