I was brought into a small, bare room, where a woman sat upon cushions.

She was dressed in white like a Mohammedan woman of the East, and over her face she wore a veil.

But a sort of shrivelled aspect which she had told me that she was very old.

She dismissed the guide who had brought me to her, and as soon as we were alone she said: "'You are English.' "And she spoke in English, though with a certain rustiness of speech, as though that language had been long unfamiliar to her tongue.
"'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.