Eva signified her inability to conjecture.
‘Two millions of piastres!’
‘Two millions of piastres! Did you say two? ‘Tis a great sum; but we might negotiate. They would accept less, perhaps much less, than two millions of piastres.’
‘If it were four millions of piastres, I must pay it,’ said Besso. ‘’Tis not the sum alone that so crosses me. The father of this young noble is a great prince, and could doubtless pay, without 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.’