“Different subjects,” she said, evasively.
“Tell me what he said when he first met thee.”
“He seemed much distressed, I knew not at what, and murmured that my face painfully reminded him of somebody.”
“Ah!—Belasez, didst thou know whom?”
“Not till I came home,” she said in a low tone.
“Ay de mi! What hast thou heard since thy coming home?”
Belasez resolved to speak the truth. She had been struck by her father’s hints that some terrible mischief had come from not speaking it; and she thought that perhaps open confession on her part might lead to confidence on his.
“I overheard you and my mother talking at night,” she said. “I gathered that the somebody whom I was like was my sister, and that her name was Anegay; and I thought she had either become a Christian, or had wedded a Christian. Father, may I know?”
“My little Belasez,” he said, with deep feeling, “thou knowest all but the one thing thou must not know. There was one called Anegay. But she was not thy sister. Let the rest be silence to thee.”
It seemed to cost Abraham immense pain to say even so much as this. He sat quiet for a moment, his face working pitifully.