Ben-Hur spoke with excitement.
And Malluch, wondering, asked, “Why so?”
“Balthasar, you said?”
“Yes. Balthasar, the Egyptian.”
“That was the name the old man gave us at the fountain today.”
Then, at the reminder, Malluch became excited.
“It is true,” he said; “and the camel was the same—and you saved the man’s life.”
“And the woman,” said Ben-Hur, like one speaking to himself—“the woman was his daughter.”
He fell to thinking; and even the reader will say he was having a vision of the woman, and that it was more welcome than that of Esther, if only because it stayed longer with him; but no—
“Tell me again,” he said, presently. “Were the three to ask, ‘Where is he that is to be King of the Jews?’”