a long time under the shady foliage; he craved no more than to
gaze at her and, when he put the old questions asked by all lovers, to be
answered with lips and eyes, or merely a speechless nod. Her hands no
longer plied the needle, and the pair would have smiled in pity on any
one who should have complained of the intolerable heat of this scorching,
parching forenoon. A pair of turtle doves over their heads were less
indifferent to the sun's rays than they, for the birds had closed their
eyes, and the head of the mother bird was resting languidly against the
dark collar round her mate's neck.

THE BRIDE OF THE NILE

By Georg Ebers

Volume 10.

CHAPTER XIII.

The Vekeel, like the Persian lovers, did not allow the heat of the day to
interfere with his plans. He regarded the governor's house as his own;
all he found there aroused, not merely his avarice, but his interest. His
first object was to find some document which might justify his
proceedings against Orion and the sequestration of his estates, in the
eyes of the authorities at Medina.

Great schemes were brewing there; if the conspiracy against the Khaliff
Omar should succeed, he had little to fear; and the greater the sum he
could ere long forward to the new sovereign, the more surely he could
count on his patronage--a sum exceeding, if possible, the largest which
his predecessor had ever cast into the Khaliff's treasury.

He went from room to room with the curiosity and avidity of a child,
touching everything, testing the softness of the pillows, peeping into
scrolls which he did not understand, tossing them aside, smelling at the
perfumes in the dead woman's rooms, and the medicines she had used. He
showed his teeth with delight when he found in her trunks some costly
jewels and gold coins, stuck the finest of her diamond rings on his
finger, already covered with gems, and then eagerly searched every corner
of the rooms which Orion had occupied.

His interpreter, who could read Greek, had to translate every document he
found that did not contain verses. While he listened, he clawed and
strummed on the young man's lyre and poured out the scented oil which
Orion had been wont to use to smear it over his beard. In front of the
bright silver mirror he could not cease from making faces.

To his great disgust he could find nothing among the hundred objects and
trifles that lay about to justify suspicion, till, just as he was leaving
the room, he