smile resting habitually on the oval face had a tale it was always telling of a nature confiding, happy, satisfied with its conditions, hopeful of the future, and unaware from any sad experience that life ever admitted of changes. Her beauty bore the marks of intelligence; her manner was not enough self-contained to be called courtly; yet it was easy, and carried its own certificate of culture; it yielded too much to natural affection to deserve the term dignified. One listening to her, and noticing the variableness of her mood, which in almost the same instant could pass from gay to serious without ever reaching an extreme, would pronounce her too timid for achievement outside the purely domestic; at the same time he would think she appeared lovable to the last degree, and might be capable of loving in equal measure.
She was dressed in Byzantine fashion. In crossing the street from her father’s house, she had thrown a veil over her head, but it was now lying carelessly about her neck. The wooden sandals with blocks under them, like those yet worn by women in Levantine countries to raise them out of the dust and mud when abroad, had been shaken lightly from her feet at the top of the stairs. Perfectly at home, she advanced to the table, and put one of her bare arms around the old man’s neck, regardless of the white locks it crushed close down, and replied:
“Thou flatterer! Do I not know beauty is altogether in the eye of the beholder, and that all persons do not see alike? Tell me why, knowing the work was to be done, you did not send for me to help you? Was it for nothing you made me acquainted with figures until—I have your authority for the saying—I might have stood for professor of mathematics in the best of the Alexandrian schools? Do not shake your head at me—or”—
With the new idea all alight in her face, she ran around the table, and caught up one of the diagrams.
“Ah, it is as I thought, father! The work I love best, and can do best! Whose is the nativity? Not mine, I know; for I was born in the glad time when Venus ruled the year. Anael, her angel, held his wings over me against this very wry-faced, snow-chilled Saturn, whom I am so glad to see in the Seventh House, which is the House of Woe. Whose the nativity, I say?”
“Nay, child—pretty child, and wilful— you have a trick of getting my secrets from me. I sometimes think I am in thy hands no more than tawdry lace just washed and being wrung preparatory to hanging in the air from thy lattice. It is well for you to know there are some things out of your reach—for the time at least.”
“That is saying you will tell me.”
“Yes—some day.”
“Then I will be patient.”
Seeing hum become thoughtful, and look abstractedly out of the window, she laid the diagram down, went back, and again put her arm around his neck.
“I did not come to interrupt you, father, but to learn two things, and run away.”
“You begin like a rhetorician. What subdivisions lie under those two things? Speak!”
“Thank you,“she replied, quickly. “First, Syama told me you were at some particular task, and I wanted to know if I could help you.”
“Dear heart!” he said, tenderly.
“Next—and this is all—I did not want you to forget we are to go up the Bosphorus this afternoon—up to Therapia, and possibly to the sea.”
“You wish to go?” he asked.
“I dreamt of it all night.”
“Then we will; and to prove I did not forget, the boatmen have their orders already. We go to the landing directly after noon.”
“Not too soon,” she answered, laughing. “I have to dress, and make myself gorgeous as an empress. The day is soft and kind, and there will be many people on the water, where I am already known quite as well as here in the city as the daughter of the Prince of India.” He replied with an air of pride:
“Thou art good enough for an emperor.”
“Then I may go and get ready.”
She withdrew her arm, kissed him, and started to the door, but returned, with a troubled look.
“One thing more, father.”
He was recovering his work, but stopped, and gave her ear.
“What is it?”
“You have said, good father, that as my studies were too confining, it would be well if I took the air every day in my sedan. So, sometimes with Syama, sometimes with Nilo, I had the men carry me along the wall in front of the Bucoleon. The view over the sea toward Mt. Ida is there very beautiful; and if I look to the landward side, right at my feet are the terraced gardens of the palace. Nowhere do the winds seem sweeter to me. For their more perfect enjoyment I have at moments alighted from the chair, and walked; always avoiding acquaintances new and old. The people appear to understand my preference, and respect it. Of late, however, one person—hardly a man—has followed me, and stopped near by when I stopped; he has even persisted in attempts to speak to me. To avoid him, I went to the Hippodrome yesterday, and taking seat in front of the small obelisks in that quarter, was delighted with the exhibition of the horsemen. Just when the entertainment was at its height, and most interesting, the person of whom I am speaking came and sat on the same bench with me. I arose at once. It is very annoying, father. What shall I do?”
The Prince did not answer immediately, and when he did, it was to ask, suggestively:
“You say he is young?”
“Yes.”
“His dress?”
“He seems to be fond of high colors.”
“You asked no question concerning him?”
“No. Whom could I ask?”
Again the Prince reflected. Outwardly he was unconcerned; yet his blood was more than warm—the blood of pride which, as every one knows, is easily started, and can go hissing hot. He did not wish her to think of the affair too much; therefore his air of indifference; nevertheless it awoke a new train of thought in him.
If one were to insult this second Lael of his love, what could he do? The idea of appeal to a magistrate was irritating. Were he to assume punishment of the insolence, from whom could he hope justice or sympathy—he, a stranger living a mysterious life?
He ran hastily over the resorts at first sight open to him. Nilo was an instrument always ready. A word would arouse the forces in that loyal but savage nature, and they were forces subject to cunning which never slept, never wearied, and was never in a hurry—a passionless cunning, like that of the Fedavies of the Old Man of the Mountain.
It may be thought the Prince was magnifying a fancied trouble; but the certainty that sorrowmust overtake him for every indulgence of affection was a haunting shadow always attending the most trifling circumstance to set his imagination conjuring calamities. That at such times his first impulse was toward revenge is explicable; the old law, an eye for an eye, was part of his religion; and coupling it with personal pride which a thought could turn into consuming heat, how natural if, while the anticipation was doing its work, his study should be to make the revenge memorable!
Feeling he was not entirely helpless in the affair, he thought best to be patient awhile, and learn who was the offender; a conclusion followed by a resolution to send
