‘Hem!  Apaecides,’ said Arbaces, recognizing the priest at a glance; ’when last we met, you were my foe.  I have wished since then to see you, for I would have you still my pupil and my friend.’

Apaecides started at the voice of the Egyptian; and halting abruptly, gazed upon him with a countenance full of contending, bitter, and scornful emotions.

‘Villain and impostor!’ said he at length; ’thou hast recovered then from the jaws of the grave!  But think not again to weave around me thy guilty meshes.  Retiarius, I am armed against thee!’

‘Hush!’ said Arbaces, in a very low voice—­but his pride, which in that descendant of kings was great, betrayed the wound it received from the insulting epithets of the priest in the quiver of his lip and the flush of his tawny brow.  ’Hush! more low! thou mayest be overheard, and if other ears than mine had drunk those sounds—­why...’

‘Dost thou threaten?—­what if the whole city had heard me?’

’The manes of my ancestors would not have suffered me to forgive thee.  But, hold, and hear me.  Thou art enraged that I would have offered violence to thy sister.  Nay, peace, peace, but one instant, I pray thee.  Thou art right; it was the frenzy of passion and of jealousy—­I have repented bitterly of my madness.  Forgive me; I, who never implored pardon of living man, beseech thee now to forgive me.  Nay, I will atone the insult—­I ask thy sister in marriage—­start not—­consider—­what is the alliance of yon holiday Greek compared to mine?  Wealth unbounded—­birth that in its far antiquity leaves your Greek and Roman names the things of yesterday—­science—­but that thou knowest!  Give me thy sister, and my whole life shall atone a moment’s error.’

’Egyptian, were even I to consent, my sister loathes the very air thou breathest:  but I have my own wrongs to forgive—­I may pardon thee that thou hast made me a tool to thy deceits, but never that thou hast seduced me to become the abettor of thy vices—­a polluted and a perjured man.  Tremble!—­even now I prepare the hour in which thou and thy false gods shall be unveiled.  Thy lewd and Circean life shall be dragged to day—­thy mumming oracles disclosed—­the fane of the idol Isis shall be a byword and a scorn—­the name of Arbaces a mark for the hisses of execration!  Tremble!’

The flush on the Egyptian’s brow was succeeded by a livid paleness.  He looked behind, before, around, to feel assured that none were by; and then he fixed his dark and dilating eye on the priest, with such a gaze of wrath and menace, that one, perhaps, less supported than Apaecides by the fervent daring of a divine zeal, could not have faced with unflinching look that lowering aspect.  As it was, however, the young convert met it unmoved, and returned it with an eye of proud defiance.

‘Apaecides,’ said the Egyptian, in a tremulous and inward tone, ’beware!  What is it thou wouldst meditate?  Speakest thou—­reflect, pause before thou repliest—­from the hasty influences of wrath, as yet divining no settled purpose, or from some fixed design?’