g, as she finished speaking, was drowned in the screams and
maledictions of the elder Israelites. Ben Davids was madly in love with
his cousin (as boys often are with ladies of twice their age), and he
had presence of mind suddenly to knock over the large brazen lamp on the
table, which illuminated the angry conclave; then, whispering to Rebecca
to go up to her own room and lock herself in, or they would kill her
else, he took her hand and led her out.

From that day she disappeared from among her people. The poor and the
wretched missed her, and asked for her in vain. Had any violence been
done to her, the poorer Jews would have risen and put all Isaac's family
to death; and besides, her old flame, Prince Boabdil, would have also
been exceedingly wrathful. She was not killed then, but, so to speak,
buried alive, and locked up in Isaac's back-kitchen: an apartment into
which scarcely any light entered, and where she was fed upon scanty
portions of the most mouldy bread and water. Little Ben Davids was the
only person who visited her, and her sole consolation was to talk to
him about Ivanhoe, and how good and how gentle he was; how brave and how
true; and how he slew the tremendous knight of the Templars, and how
he married a lady whom Rebecca scarcely thought worthy of him, but with
whom she prayed he might be happy; and of what color his eyes were, and
what were the arms on his shield--viz, a tree with the word "Desdichado"
written underneath, &c. &c. &c.: all which talk would not have
interested little Davids, had it come from anybody else's mouth, but to
which he never tired of listening as it fell from her sweet lips.

So, in fact, when old Isaac of York came to negotiate with Don Beltran
de Cuchilla for the ransom of the Alfaqui's daughter of Xixona, our
dearest Rebecca was no more dead than you and I; and it was in his rage
and fury against Ivanhoe that Isaac told that cavalier the falsehood
which caused the knight so much pain and such a prodigious deal of
bloodshed to the Moors: and who knows, trivial as it may seem, whether
it was not that very circumstance which caused the destruction in Spain
of the Moorish power?

Although Isaac, we may be sure, never told his daughter that Ivanhoe
had cast up again, yet Master Ben Davids did, who heard it from his
employer; and he saved Rebecca's life by communicating the intelligence,
for the poor thing would have infallibly perished but for this good
news. She had now b