Esca rose impatiently at intervals, walked a few paces to and fro, sat down again, and threw small fragments of the ruin into the water. Presently a figure, draped in black and closely veiled, moved down to the river’s side near where the Briton sat, and began filling a pitcher from the stream. It could hardly have passed the column without seeing him, yet did it seem unconscious of his presence; and who could tell how the heart might be beating within the bosom, or the cheek blushing behind the veil? That veil was lifted, however, with an exclamation of surprise, when Esca stooped over her to take the pitcher from her hand, and Mariamne’s cheek turned paler now than it had been even on the memorable night when he rescued her from the grasp of Spado and his fellow-bacchanals. He, too, murmured some vague words of astonishment at finding her here. If they were honest, for whom could he have been waiting so impatiently? and it is possible, besides, Mariamne might have been a little disappointed had she been allowed to fill her pitcher from the Tiber for herself.
The Jewess had been thinking about him a good deal more than she intended, a good deal more than she knew, for the last two days. It is strange how very insensibly such thoughts gain growth and strength without care or culture. There are plants we prune and water every day which never [pg 83]reach more than a sickly and stunted vitality after all, and there are others that we trample down, cut over, tear up by the very roots, which nevertheless attain such vigour and luxuriance that our walls are covered by their tendrils, and our dwellings pervaded by their fragrance.
Mariamne was no bigoted daughter of Judah, for whom the stranger was an outcast because a heathen. Her constant intercourse with Calchas had taught her nobler truths than she had derived from the traditions of her fathers. And with all her pride of race and national predilections, she had imbibed those principles of charity and toleration which formed the groundwork of a new religion, destined to shed its light upon all the nations of the earth.
It was not precisely as a brother, though, that Mariamne had yet brought herself to regard the handsome British slave. They were soon conversing happily together. The embarrassment of meeting had disappeared with the first affectation of surprise. It was not long before he told her how tired he had been of watching by the broken column at the riverside.
“How could you know I should come here?” asked the girl with a look of infinite simplicity and candour, though she must have remembered all the time, that she had not scrupled to hint at the daily practice in course of conversation with Calchas, on the night when Esca brought her safely home.
“I hoped it,” he replied, with a smile. “I have been a hunter, you know, and have learned that the shyest and wildest of animals seek the waterside at sunset. I was here yesterday, and waited two long hours in vain.”
She glanced quickly at him, but withdrew her eyes immediately, while the blood mounted to her pale face.
“Did you expect to see me?” she asked in a trembling voice; “and I never left the house the whole of yesterday! Oh, how I wish I had known it!”
Then she stopped in painful embarrassment, as having said too much. He appeared not to notice her confusion. He seemed to have some confession to make on his own part—something he hardly dared to tell her, yet which his honest nature could not consent should be withheld. At last he said with an effort—
“You know what I am! My time is not my own, my very limbs belong to another. It matters not that the master is kind, good, and considerate. Mariamne, I am a slave!”