The beauty looked at the pale girl in deep perplexity a moment, and then said—
“Zuleime, your father is suffering! Let’s see if that will rouse you!”
“My father? Oh, no, he mustn’t. Tell him not to mind it. I do not, much, now. I know he is at rest. And we shall be, soon. Tell him not to mind it.”
“Zuleime! Awake! Arouse yourself! Your father is in danger, I tell you!”
“In danger—in danger. Tell me about it.”
“Listen to me, then! Rouse your mind! and fix it upon what I am going to tell you about your father’s peril.”
And the lady took her hands and looked into her eyes, watching their expression, and bringing back her wandering ideas every time they showed the least sign of flying, and rousing up her flagging intellect every time it betrayed a disposition to sink—and so repeated the whole history of the difficulty over again. But the distracted mind of the poor girl was scarcely able to follow the pains-taking narrator through the facts of the case. Passing her hand once or twice across her corrugated brow, she said—
“What—what is it you say about father, and prisons, and Major Cabell? I—I am afraid my memory isn’t as good as it used to be—please tell me over again.”
The beauty, with a shrug of her shoulders, reiterated the story, placing it in the fewest, simplest, and most direct words she could find. But the stricken girl only looked sorely distressed and perplexed, and said, plaintively—
“Please forgive me, and tell me what it is that threatens father!”