Masanath looked at her while she thought busily.  “If I tell it, I break a heart.  But if they bide here, they die.  None other will come to them by chance or on purpose.”

“I would not risk it,” she answered.  Returning to the pallet of matting she finished her breakfast in silence.  After a little sigh she glanced at the wine in one of the small amphoras which Rachel had brought to her as a drinking-cup.  “Mayhap the plague is past,” she said, hinting, “and I am athirst.”

Rachel took up another jar and went forth.  The hairy creature in the corner, tethered to the amphora rack, slipped his collar and followed her.

As soon as the Israelite was gone, Masanath went into the inner chamber.  Standing by the old woman, who lay upon a mattress, set on the top of the sarcophagus, she said hurriedly: 

“Ye may not remain here.  Kenkenes is known to me and he will not return.”

“Thou dost not tell me he was false to us,” Deborah exclaimed.  “Nay, I will not believe it,” she declared.

“Nay, he was the soul of honor, but he is dead.”

“Dead!” the old woman cried, catching at her dress.

“Hush!  Tell her not!”

“Aye, thou art right.  Tell her not!  But—­but how did he die?”

“By drowning.  His boat was discovered battered and overturned among the wharf-piling at Memphis, some weeks agone.”

The old woman was silent for a moment and then she shook her head.

“He is a resourceful youth and he may have procured another boat and set this one adrift to deceive his enemies.  Yet, the time has been so long, it may be; it may be.”

“None in Memphis doubts it.  His father hath given him up and his house and his people are in mourning.  But we may not lose this moment in surmises.  Wilt thou go with me into Memphis—­if this sending is withdrawn?”

“There is no other choice,” Deborah answered after some pondering.  “Kenkenes offered us refuge with his father—­alas! that the young man should die!” After shaking her head and muttering to herself in her own tongue, she went on.  “But Rachel hesitated to accept, at first from maiden shyness, though now she hath a secret fear, I doubt not, that the Egyptian may have played her false.  The sorry news must be told her ere she would go.”

“Nay, keep it from her yet a while.  Tell her not now.”

“How may we?” Deborah asked helplessly.

“Listen.  I am a householder in Memphis for a year.  The place is secure from much visiting and only my trusted servants are there.  They will not tell her—­none else will—­thou and I shall keep discreet tongues, but if the fact creep out, in the way of such things, we need not accuse ourselves of killing her hope.  As thou sayest, the young man may not be dead.  But let us not risk anything.

“And furthermore,” she caught up the line of her talk before Deborah could answer, “I may as well work good out of an evil I can not escape.  I am betrothed to the heir of the crown of Egypt—­”