“No.”
“Ah, how little there has been of your life!”
The sigh that succeeded the exclamation could not have been more piteously expressive had the loss been the Egyptian’s own.
Next moment her laugh might have been heard in the street below; and she said
“Oh, oh, my pretty simpleton!
The half-fledged birds nested in the ear of the great bust out on the Memphian sands know nearly as much as you.” Then, seeing Esther’s confusion, she changed her manner, and said in a confiding tone, “You must not take offence.
Oh no!
I was playing.
Let me kiss the hurt, and tell you what I would not to any other— not if Simbel himself asked it of me, offering a lotus-cup of the spray of the Nile!”
Another laugh, masking excellently the look she turned sharply upon the Jewess, and she said,
“The King is coming.”
Esther gazed at her in innocent surprise.
“The Nazarene,” Iras continued— “he whom our fathers have been talking about so much, whom Ben-Hur has been serving and toiling for so long”— her voice dropped several tones lower— “the Nazarene will be here to-morrow, and Ben-Hur to-night.”
Esther struggled to maintain her composure, but failed: her eyes fell, the tell-tale blood surged to her cheek and forehead, and she was saved sight of the triumphant smile that passed, like a gleam, over the face of the Egyptian.
“See, here is his promise.”
And from her girdle she took a roll.
“Rejoice with me, O my friend!
He will be here tonight!
On the Tiber there is a house, a royal property, which he has pledged to me; and to be its mistress is to be— ”
A sound of some one walking swiftly along the street below interrupted the speech, and she leaned over the parapet to see. Then she drew back, and cried, with hands clasped above her head,
“Now blessed be Isis! ’Tis he— Ben-Hur himself!
That he should appear while I had such thought of him!
There are no gods if it be not a good omen.
Put your arms about me, Esther— and a kiss!”
The Jewess looked up.
Upon each cheek there was a glow; her eyes sparkled with a light more nearly of anger than ever her nature emitted before.
Her gentleness had been too roughly overridden.
It was not enough for her to be forbidden more than fugitive dreams of the man she loved; a boastful rival must tell her in confidence of her better success, and of the brilliant promises which were its rewards.
Of her, the servant of a servant, there had been no hint of remembrance; this other could show his letter, leaving her to imagine all it breathed.
So she said,
“Dost thou love him so much, then, or Rome so much better?”
The Egyptian drew back a step; then she bent her haughty head quite near her questioner.
“What is he to thee, daughter of Simonides?”
Esther, all thrilling, began,
“He is my— ”
A thought blasting as lightning stayed the words: she paled, trembled, recovered, and answered,
“He is my father’s friend.”
Her tongue had refused to admit her servile condition.
Iras laughed more lightly than before.
“Not more than that?” she said. “Ah, by the lover-gods of Egypt, thou mayst keep thy kisses— keep them. Thou hast taught me but now that there are others vastly more estimable waiting me here in Judea; and”— she turned away, looking back over her shoulder—
“I will go get them.
Peace to thee.”
Esther saw her disappear down the steps, when, putting her hands over her face, she burst into tears so they ran scalding through her fingers— tears of shame and choking passion.
And, to deepen the paroxysm to her even temper so strange, up with a new meaning of withering force rose her father’s words—
“Thy love might not have been vainly given had I kept fast hold of all I had, as I might have done.”
And all the stars were out, burning low above the city and the dark wall of mountains about it, before she recovered enough to go back to the summer-house, and in silence take her accustomed place at her father’s side, humbly waiting his pleasure.
To such duty it seemed her youth, if not her life, must be given.
And, let the truth be said, now that the pang was spent, she went not unwillingly back to the duty.
Chapter 2
An hour or thereabouts after the scene upon the roof, Balthasar and Simonides, the latter attended by Esther, met in the great chamber of the palace; and while they were talking, Ben-Hur and Iras came in together.