A stranger would have asked this question, while his eye rested upon the object of it with mingled feelings of wonder and admiration: admiration at such rare beauty—wonder at beholding it in such rude companionship!
It was a beauty that need not be painted in detail. The forehead of noble arch; the scimitar-shaped eyebrows of ebon blackness; the dark-brown flashing pupils; the piquant prominence of the nose, with its spiral curving nostrils; were all characteristics of Hebraic beauty—a shrine before which both Moslem and Christian have ofttimes bent the knee in humblest adoration.
Twenty cycles have rolled past—twenty centuries of outrage, calumny, and wrong—housed in low haunts—pillaged and persecuted—oft driven to desperation—rendered roofless and homeless—still, amid all, and in spite of all, lovely are Judah’s dark-eyed daughters—fair as when they danced to the music of cymbal and timbrel, or, to the accompaniment of the golden-stringed harp, sang the lays of a happier time.
Here, in a new world, and canopied under an occidental sky, had sprung up a very type of Jewish beauty: for never was daughter of Judah lovelier than the daughter of Jacob Jessuron—she who was now riding by his side.
A singular contrast did they present as they rode together—this fair maid and that harsh-featured, ugly old man—unlike as the rose to its parent thorn.
Sad are we to say, that the contrast was only physical morally, it was “like father like daughter.” In external form, Judith Jessuron was an angel; in spirit—and we say it with regret—she was the child of her father—devilish as he.
“A failure?” said this fair she, taking the initiative. “Pah! I needn’t have asked you: it’s clear enough from your looks—though, certes, that beautiful countenance of yours is not a very legible index to your thoughts. What says Vanity Vaughan? Will he sell the girl?”
“No.”
“As I expected.”
“S’help me, he won’t!”