Beldi looked at the Pasha with astonishment.
"I have loved this woman without ceasing and with adoration," continued the Pasha; "this may sound strange to you, coming from the lips of a Turk, but it is true. I have no other wife. She has borne me a son of whom I am proud. Now my affairs are in so critical a condition that I must either work wonders with the help of God, or fall in battle. You know that the religion of Mohammed sets a high value on death in battle, so that this causes me little anxiety; but I am thinking of my wife, who if she should lose me and my son would be placed in a most doubtful position. In Turkey, she would be exposed to persecution because she had remained a Christian; in Transylvania, because she had married a Mohammedan; there through my relatives and here through her own. For that reason I turn to you with a request. I have heard you spoken of as a man of honor and of your wife as a worthy woman. Receive my wife into your family. I have sufficient property for her so that she will be no burden to you in that respect; she needs only your protection. If you promise to grant me this request you can count on my friendship and gratitude forever, the command of my sword and my property and, in case I survive, of my life."
Beldi grasped the Pasha by the hand. "Bring your wife," he said, in cordial tones, "my wife and I will receive her as a sister."
"Not as a sister, I beg of you," said Kutschuk, laughingly, "with us that is equivalent to enmity. So then, I may bring her?"
"We shall be happy to have her with us," replied Beldi, and gave order to his servants to return to Tatrang with the Pasha's followers and bring his carriage from there by torch light. Kutschuk sent word that Feriz Bey was to come too. Meantime, Beldi presented Kutschuk Pasha to his wife, and it gave him no little pleasure to find that she remembered the Pasha's wife as a friend in her youth, whom she would meet again with natural interest and joy.
In the course of a few hours the carriage arrived and rolled heavily over the stone-paved courtyard. Madame Beldi hurried down the steps to meet the Pasha's wife, and as the latter stepped from the carriage received her with a cry of joy. "Katharine, do you know me still?" She too recognized her playmate of old and the two friends rushed into each other's arms, kissed each other and said sweetly, "How handsome you have grown!" "What a stately woman you have become!"
"See, this is my son," said Katharine, pointing to Feriz Bey who, dismounted from his horse, was now hurrying forward to help his mother from the carriage.
"What a fine boy!" exclaimed Madame Beldi, charmed; she threw her arms around the handsome, rosy-cheeked child and kissed him again and again;—if she had only known that this child was no longer a child, but a general!
"I too have children," said Madame Beldi, with the sweet rivalry of maternal feeling. "You shall see them. Does your son speak Hungarian?"
"Hungarian!" asked Katharine, almost hurt. "Does the child of a Hungarian mother speak Hungarian! How can you ask such a question?"