As she touched the spring it flew open, showing an exquisitely painted miniature on ivory.
She gave an involuntary cry of delight.
"What a beautiful girl," she exclaimed. "It is one of the loveliest faces I ever saw." She scrutinized it carefully, studying it with an artist's evident pleasure. Then she looked up with a smile.
"This must be the one Rabbi Barthold spoke to me about," she said. "He said that she was rightly named Esther, for it means star, and her great, dark eyes always made him think of starlight."
"How long ago since he told you that?" asked David in surprise.
"When we first began taking Hebrew lessons," she answered.
"And did he tell you we are bethrothed?"
"Yes."
David felt annoyed. He knew intuitively why his old friend had departed so from his usual scrupulousness regarding a confidence. He had intimated to David, when he had first met Miss Hallam, that she was an unusually fascinating girl, and he feared that their growing friendship might gradually lessen the young man's interest in Esther, whom he saw only at long intervals, as she lived in a distant city.