ithout serious injury to
himself, two millions of piastres for the ransom of his son; but that's
not it. He comes here; he is sent to me. I was to care for him, think
for him, guard over him: I have never even seen him; and he is wounded,
plundered, and a prisoner!'

'But if he avoided you, my father?' murmured Eva, with her eyes fixed
upon the ground.

'Avoided me!' said Besso; 'he never thought of me but as of a Jew
banker, to whom he would send his servant for money when he needed it.
Was I to stand on punctilios with a great Christian noble? I ought to
have waited at his gate every day when he came forth, and bowed to the
earth, until it pleased him to notice me; I ought----'

'No, no, no, my father! you are bitter. This youth is not such as you
think; at least, in all probability is not,' said Eva. 'You hear he is
fanatically Christian; he may be but deeply religious, and his thoughts
at this moment may rest on other things than the business of the world.
He who makes pilgrimage to Sinai can scarcely think us so vile as you
would intimate.'

'What will he think of those whom he is among? Here is the wound, Eva!
Guess, then, child, who has shot this arrow. 'Tis my father!'

'O traitor! traitor!' said Eva, quickly covering her face with her
hands. 'My terror was prophetic! There is none so base!'

'Nay, nay,' said Besso; 'these, indeed, are women's words. The great
Sheikh in this has touched me nearly, but I see no baseness in it. He
could not know the intimate relation that should subsist between me and
this young Englishman. He has captured him in the desert, according to
the custom of his tribe. Much as Amalek may injure me, I must acquit him
of treason and of baseness.'

'Yes, yes,' said Eva, with an abstracted air. 'You misconceive me. I was
thinking of others; and what do you purpose, my father?'

'First, to clear myself of the deep stain that I now feel upon my life,'
said Besso. 'This Englishman comes to Jerusalem with an unbounded
credit on my house: he visits the wilderness, and is made prisoner by my
father-in-law, who is in ambush in a part of the desert which his tribe
never frequents, and who sends to me for a princely ransom for his
captive.

These are the apparent circumstances. These are the facts. There is
but one inference from them. I dare say 'tis drawn already by all the
gossips of the city: they are hard at it, I doubt not, at this moment,
in my own divan, winking their eyes and shru