The worthy woman did all she could, but her honest heart told her that the arrival of Aranka's father, and the sooner the better, would do more good than all her remedies. That would transform the invalid, and joy would give her back her failing vital energy.
Feriz Beg had not been able to speak to Aranka for two days; the girl had suffered greatly during the night, and Feriz was condemned to listen to the moaning of his beloved, and to hear her in the delirium of fever through the prison windows without being able to go to her, without being able to wipe the sweat from her forehead, or put a glass of cold water to her lips, or whisper to her words of comfort, and had to be content with knowing that she was with those who carefully nursed her.
Oh, it is not to the dying that death is most bitter.
By the morning the fever left her. The rising sun was just beginning to shine through the narrow round window and the sick girl begged to be carried out into the open air and the warm morning sunshine. She was no longer able to walk by herself, and they carried her out on to the bastions in an arm-chair.
It was a beautiful autumn morning, a sort of transparent light rested upon the whole region, giving a pale lilac blue to the sunlit scene. Where the road wound down from the Szekler hills a light cloud of dust was visible in the morning vapour; it seemed to be coming from the direction of Szamosújvár.
"Ah! there is my mother coming!" whispered Aranka, with a smiling face.
The young Turk held his hand before his face and fixed his eagle eyes in that direction; and when for a moment the breeze swept the dust off the road, and a carriage on springs drawn by five horses appeared, he exclaimed with a beating heart:
"Yes, that is indeed the carriage in which they took away thy mother."
Aranka was dumb with joy and surprise; she could not speak a word, she only squeezed Feriz Beg's hands and fixed her tearful eyes upon him with a grateful look.
The carriage seemed to be rapidly approaching. "That is how people hasten who have something joyful to say," thought Feriz, and then he began to fear less boundless joy might injure the life of his darling.