"Have I not told you I keep a spy on the old Prince's house? A messenger from him has just reported the chair arrived for her; and this being her favorite stroll, she will be here presently."
"Have you considered the risks of your project?"
"Risks? Pah!"
The exclamation was with a contemptuous laugh.
"But they have grown since last night," the other persisted. "The Indian is now at the Palace, His Majesty's guest."
"Yes, I had report of that also; but I have studied the game, and if you fear to join me, I will see it through alone. As an offence against law, it is abduction, not murder; and the penalty, imprisonment, can be easily changed to banishment, which with me means at the utmost a short absence to give friends an opportunity to prepare for my return. Consider, moreover, the subject of the offence will be a woman. Can you name an instance in which the kidnapper of a woman has been punished?—I mean in our time?"
"True, women are the cheapest commodity in the market; therefore"—
"I understand," the first speaker interposed, a little impatiently, "but Princes of India are not common in Constantinople, while their daughters are less so. See the temptation! Besides, in the decadence of our Byzantine empire, the criminal laws fail worse and worse of execution. Only last night my father, delivering a lecture, said neglect in this respect was one of the reasons of the Empire's going. Only the poor and degraded suffer penalties now. And I—pah! What have I to fear? Or thou? And from whom? When the girl's loss is discovered—you observe I am viewing the affair in its most malignant aspect—I know the course the Prince will take. He will run to the palace; there he will fall at the Emperor's feet, tell his tale of woe, and"—
"And if thou art denounced?"
The conspirator laughed again. "The worse for the Prince," he at length replied. "The Hegumen, my honored father, will follow him to the palace, and—but let the details go! The relations between the Basileus and the Church are strained to breaking; and the condition is not sanable while the quarrel between the Patriarch and Scholarius waxes hotter."