"Weep not," he said cheerfully, "your mother will soon come again and bring your father with her, and then you will all rejoice together."
"Ah, but then they'll kill father!" sobbed one of the children timidly.
"So long as Feriz Beg can use his sword none shall touch Paul Béldi," cried the youth, with flashing eyes. "My sword and my father's will flash around him, his enemies will be my enemies. Fear not! when I get back my sword, I will win back his liberty with it."
"I thank you, I thank you," whispered a gentle voice overcome by emotion.
Feriz Beg recognised the silvery voice of Aranka, and the weeping blue eyes of the seraph face which regarded him, like Heaven after rain, flashed upon him a burning ray of gratitude which was to haunt him in his dreams and in his memory for ever.
Feriz felt his heart leap with a great joy. Pressing close up to the prison bars that he might get as close to the girl as possible he said to her with a tender voice:
"How happy I am now that we dwell together as neighbours in the same dungeon, but oh, how much happier shall we be when no doors are closed upon us? Let me then have a place beside thy hearth and within thy heart!"
The fair, sad girl, with a face full of foreboding, stretched through the bars of the dungeon a hand whiter than a lily, whiter than snow. Feriz Beg solemnly raised it to his lips and falling on his knees, in an outburst of sublime devotion touched his lips and his forehead with that beloved hand.