At this moment the curtain of the pavilion was withdrawn, and there stood before them Fakredeen. The moment his eyes met those of Eva, he covered his face with both his hands.
‘How is the Prince of Franguestan?’ inquired Amalek.
The young Emir advanced, and threw himself at the feet of Eva. ‘We must entreat the Rose of Sharon to visit him,’ he said, ‘for there is no hakeem in Arabia equal to her. Yes, I came to welcome you, and to entreat you to do this kind office for the most gifted and the most interesting of beings;’ and he looked up in her face with a supplicating glance.
‘And you too, are you fearful,’ said Eva, in atone of tender reproach, ‘that by his death you may lose your portion of the spoil?’
The Emir gave a deprecating glance of anguish, and then, bending his head, pressed his lips to the Bedouin robes which she wore. ‘’Tis the most unfortunate of coincidences, but believe me, dearest of friends, ‘tis only a coincidence. I am here merely by accident; I was hunting, I was——’
‘You will make me doubt your intelligence as well as your good faith,’ said Eva, ‘if you persist in such assurances.’
‘Ah! if you but knew him,’ exclaimed Fakredeen, ‘you would believe me when I tell you that I am ready to sacrifice even my life for his. Far from sharing the spoil,’ he added, in a rapid and earnest whisper, ‘I had already proposed, and could have insured, his escape; when he went to Sinai, to that unfortunate Sinai. I had two dromedaries here, thoroughbred; we might have reached Hebron before——’
‘You went with him to Sinai?’
‘He would not suffer it; he desired, he said, to be silent and to be alone. One of the Bedouins, who accompanied him, told me that they halted in the valley, and that he went up alone into the mountain, where he remained a day and night. When he returned hither, I perceived a great change in him. His words were quick, his eye glittered like fire; he told me that he had seen an angel, and in the morning he was as he is now. I have wept, I have prayed for him in the prayers of every religion, I have bathed his temples with liban, and hung his tent with charms. O Rose of Sharon! Eva, beloved, darling Eva, I have faith in no one but in you. See him, I beseech you, see him! If you but knew him, if you had but listened to his voice, and felt the greatness of his thoughts and spirit, it would not need that I should make this entreaty. But, alas! you know him not; you have never listened to him; you have never seen him; or neither he, nor I, nor any of us, would have been here, and have been thus.’