‘The Egyptian has come to her time,’ said he to Giacomo: ‘yonder is her carriage at the gate; and the youth, is he still sleeping?’
‘Yes, he has not stirred for hours; he breathes so lightly that he scarcely seems alive, and his cheeks are colourless as death.’
‘There, yonder she comes; she walks like one in the prime of life. She is evidently not old, Giacomo.’
From the window where they stood, they could mark a tall, commanding figure moving slowly along the garden walk, and stopping at moments to gather flowers. A thick black veil concealed in some degree her form, but could not altogether hide the graceful motion with which she advanced.
CHAPTER XV. THE PÈRE AND THE PRINCESS
Gerald was lying on a couch in his habitual mood of half dreamy consciousness, when the Egyptian entered. Her tall and stately figure, veiled to the very feet, moving with a proud but graceful step, seemed scarcely to arrest his notice for a moment, and his eyes fell again upon a few wild-flowers that lay beside him.
Making a sign to the servant that she would be alone, the Egyptian drew nigh the couch, and stood silently regarding him. After a while, she raised one arm till the hand was extended over his head, and held it thus some minutes. He lifted up his eyes toward her, and then, with a sort of wearied motion, dropped them again, heaved a heavy sigh, and seemed to sink into a sleep.
Touching the centre of his forehead with her forefinger, she stood for some minutes motionless; and then slowly passed her hand over his face, and laid it gently on his heart; a slight, scarcely perceptible shudder shook the youth’s frame at this instant, and then he was still; so still and so motionless, that he appeared like one dead. She now breathed strongly two or three times over his face, making with her hands a motion, as though sprinkling a fluid over him. As she did so, the youth’s lips slightly opened, and something like a faint smile seemed to settle on his features. Bending down she laid her ear close to his lips, like one listening: she waited a few seconds, and then, in a voice that slightly trembled, with a thrill of joyous emotion, she whispered out—
‘You have not, then, forgotten, Gherardi mio; those happy hours still live within your memory.’