om he honored, nay, loved, though he
had opposed his wishes.

And Hosea? Why, he too, like himself, this princely suitor, and all other
men, must love her, spite of his strange conduct at the well by the
roadside--it was impossible for him to do otherwise--and now, safe from
the poor prisoner's resentment, she was basely, treacherously enjoying
another's tender caresses.

Siptah, he had heard at their last meeting, was his uncle's foe, and it
was to him that she betrayed the man she loved!

The chink in the tent was ready to show him everything that occurred
within, but he often closed his eyes that he might not behold it. Often,
it is true, the hateful scene held him in thrall by a mysterious spell
and he would fain have torn the walls of the tent asunder, struck the
detested Egyptian to the ground, and shouted into the faithless woman's
face the name of Hosea, coupled with the harshest reproaches.

The fervent passion which had taken possession of him was suddenly
transformed to hate and scorn. He had believed himself to be the happiest
of mortals, and he had suddenly become the most miserable; no one, he
believed, had ever experienced such a fall from the loftiest heights to
the lowest depths.

The nurse had been right. Naught save misery and despair could come to
him from so faithless a woman.

Once he started up to fly, but he again heard the bewitching tones of her
musical laugh, and mysterious powers detained him, forcing him to listen.

At first the seething blood had throbbed so violently in his ears that he
felt unable to follow the dialogue in the lighted tent. But, by degrees,
he grasped the purport of whole sentences, and now he understood all that
they said, not a word of their further conversation escaped him, and it
was absorbing enough, though it revealed a gulf from which he shrank
shuddering.

Kasana refused the bold suitor many favors for which he pleaded, but this
only impelled him to beseech her more fervently to give herself to him,
and the prize he offered in return was the highest gift of earth, the
place by his side as queen on the throne of Egypt, to which he aspired.
He said this distinctly, but what followed was harder to understand; for
the passionate suitor was in great haste and often interrupted his hasty
sentences to assure Kasana, to whose hands in this hour he was committing
his life and liberty, of his changeless love, or to soothe her when the
boldness of his advances awake