To do Mariamne justice she heard only the first sentence.
“In danger!” she repeated, “and I could save him! Oh, tell me where he is, and what I can do for his sake!”
The wise woman pulled a small mirror from her bosom.
“I cannot tell you,” she answered, “but I can show him to you in this. Only not here, where the shadow of a passer-by might destroy the charm. Let us turn aside to that vacant space by the broken column, and you shall look without interruption on the face you love.”
It was but a short way off, though the ruins which surrounded it made the place lonely and secluded; had it been twice the distance, however, Mariamne would have accompanied her new acquaintance without hesitation in her eagerness for tidings of Esca’s fate. As she neared the broken column, so endeared to her by associations, she could not repress a faint sigh, which was not lost on her companion.
“It was here you met him before,” whispered the wise woman. “It is here you shall see his face again.”
This was scarcely a random shaft, for it required little penetration to discover that Mariamne had some tender associations connected with a spot thus adapted for the meeting of a pair of lovers; nevertheless the apparent familiarity with her previous actions was sufficient to convince the Jewess of her companion’s supernatural knowledge, and though it roused alarm, it excited curiosity in a still greater degree.
“Take the mirror in your hand,” whispered the wise woman, when they had reached the column, casting, at the same time, a searching glance around. “Shut your eyes whilst I speak the charm that calls him, three times over, and then look steadily on its surface till I have counted a hundred.”
Mariamne obeyed these directions implicitly. Standing in the vacant space with the mirror in her hand, she shut her eyes and listened intently to the solemn tones of the wise woman chanting in a low monotonous voice some unintelligible stanzas, while from the deep shadow behind the broken column, there stole out the portly figure of Damasippus, and, at the same moment, half a dozen strong well-armed slaves rose from the different hiding-places in which they lay concealed amongst the ruins. Ere the incantation had been twice repeated, Damasippus threw a shawl over the girl’s head, muffling her so completely, while he caught her in his strong arms, that an outcry was impossible. The others snatched her up ere she could make a movement, and bore her swiftly off to a chariot with four white horses waiting in the next street, whilst the wise woman, following at a rapid pace, and disencumbering herself of her female attire as she sped along, disclosed the cunning features and the thin wiry form of Oarses the Egyptian. Coming up with Damasippus, who was panting behind the slaves and their burden, he laughed a low noiseless laugh.
“My plan was the best,” said he, “after all. What fools these women are, O my friend! Is there any other creature that can be taken with a bait so simple? Three inches of mirror and the ghost of an absent face!”