The last words had been scarcely audible, and she rested some time ere she continued: 

“Hosea knows all this, except how anxious I was when he was in the field, and how I longed for him ere he returned.  At last, at last he came home, and how I rejoiced!  But he, Hosea . . . ?  That woman—­Ephraim told me so—­that tall, arrogant woman summoned him to Pithom.  But he returned, and then. . . .  Oh, Nun, your son. . . . that was the hardest thing . . . !  He refused my hand, which my father offered. . . .  And how that hurt me. . . !  I can say no more . . . !  Give me the drink!”

Her cheeks had flushed crimson during these painful confessions, and when the experienced old man perceived how rapidly the excitement under which she was laboring hastened the approach of death, he begged her to keep silence; but she insisted upon profiting by the time still allowed her, and though the sharp pain with which a short cough tortured her forced her to press her hand upon her breast, she continued: 

“Then hate came; but it did not last long—­and never did I love him more ardently than when I drove after the poor convict—­you remember, my boy.  Then began the horrible, wicked, evil time . . . of which I must tell him that he may not despise me, if he hears about it.  I never had a mother, and there was no one to warn me. . . .  Where shall I begin?  Prince Siptah—­you know him, father—­that wicked man will soon rule over my country.  My father is in a conspiracy with him . . . merciful gods, I can say no more!”

Terror and despair convulsed her features as she uttered these words; but Ephraim interrupted her and, with tearful eyes and faltering voice, confessed that he knew all.  Then he repeated what he had heard while listening outside of her tent, and her glance confirmed the tale.

When he finally spoke of the wife of the viceroy and chief-priest Bai, whose body had been borne to the shore with her, Kasana interrupted him with the low exclamation: 

“She planned it all.  Her husband was to be the greatest man in the country and rule even Pharaoh; for Siptah is not the son of a king.”

“And,” the old man interrupted, to quiet her and help her tell what she desired to say, “as Bai raised, he can overthrow him.  He will become, even more certainly than the dethroned monarch, the tool of the man who made him king.  But I know Aarsu the Syrian, and if I see aright, the time will come when he will himself strive, in distracted Egypt, rent by internal disturbances, for the power which, through his mercenaries, he aided others to grasp.  But child, what induced you to follow the army and this shameful profligate?”

The dying girl’s eyes sparkled, for the question brought her directly to what she desired to tell, and she answered as loudly and quickly as her weakness permitted: 

“I did it for your son’s sake, for love of him, to liberate Hosea.  The evening before I had steadily and firmly refused the wife of Bai.  But when I saw your son at the well and he, Hosea. . . .  Oh, at last he was so affectionate and kissed me so kindly . . . and then—­then. . . .  My poor heart!  I saw him, the best of men, perishing amid contumely and disease.