"To die!" Jack cried in horror. "Who talks of dying? No, you shall not die, but live. You shall live for me, my own true wife, in happy England. Say 'yes' to that, Shushan."
She looked at him in wonder. At last the colour mounted to her pale cheeks, her lips parted softly, and a low murmur came, "If God wills."
Hohannes turned gravely to the rest. "No doubt," he said, stroking his beard, "Yon Effendi has done after the manner of the English, when they would take their wives. If he is satisfied, we may go our way, thanking God, who has sent him to the help of our dear child in her peril."
Jack's heart beat thickly, as one by one they went, and he was left alone with Shushan and her mother. Hohannes had looked back to see if he were following; but no, he stood rooted to the spot. "The custom of his country," thought the old man, and passed on.
Jack stood looking on the ground, not daring to raise his eyes to Shushan's face. But when the last retreating footstep had died away, he looked up, and there was that in his face which she had never seen before. The question of his heart was this: "Does she care for me, or am I only better than a Turk?" It spoke in his eyes, and thrilled her with a sense of something strangely new and sweet. He had been kind and good to her for so long a time, but this—what was this?
Instinctively she turned from him to her mother. Mariam's tears of joy and thankfulness were falling drop by drop. She could have thrown herself at the feet of the deliverer of her child. But, true to the custom of her race when a maiden is in the presence of him who has chosen her, she drew the veil over her daughter's face.
"Ah!" Jack exclaimed involuntarily. But he had seen enough—enough at least to assure him that he could teach Shushan to love him as he loved her. "Dear mother," he said, "you have been a mother to me for so long; now I am going to be your son altogether, and take care of your Lily."
Scarcely had the men reached the court when the priest said gravely, "There is one thing we have left out of our account, which is serious, and may not be disregarded. An Englishman cannot marry a subject of the Sultan without a written permission from his own Consul—even if he can do it except in the Consul's presence. Under the circumstances, I dare not perform the ceremony; terrible harm might come of it; and moreover it might not be valid in England."
Most of the party knew this already, but in their excitement they had disregarded or forgotten it. They stood just as they were in the court, and looked at one another; "all faces gathered blackness."
"Call forth Yon Effendi and tell him," said Hohannes.