Bessie said not a word, but only clung to Dolly's hand and stared at the
treacherous gypsy.

"So then, when you had gone, I had to find you again, and send word to
Peter to do as I said, so that we could catch you, and stop you from
going to your friends and telling them where we had hidden your friend
who is there with you now. Now we have two, instead of one. Oh, I have
done well, have I not, Peter?"

Peter grinned, and grunted something in his own tongue that made Lolla
smile.

"Tie them up again, Peter," said Lolla, looking viciously at Bessie, and
obviously gloating over the way in which she had tricked the American
girl. And Peter, nothing loath, advanced to do so. But Bessie had stood
all she could.

Dolly, terribly cast down by this sudden upsetting of all the hopes of
rescue that the coming of Bessie and her release from the cords that
bound her had raised, was close beside her, shivering with fright and
despair.

And Bessie, with a sudden cry of anger, seized the knife Lolla had given
her, which had been lying at her feet. Furiously she brandished it.

"If either of you come a step nearer I'll use it!" she said, scarcely
able to recognize her own voice, so changed was it by the anger that
Lolla's treachery had aroused in her. "You'd better not think I'm
joking. I mean it!"