At the close of this communication, to which Neforis listened with a vacant stare, horrified and at last almost crushed, the interpreter begged that she would grant the Vekeel an audience.

“Not just yet—­give me a few minutes,” said the widow, bringing out the words with difficulty:  first she must have recourse to her secret specific.  When she had done so, she expressed her readiness to see Obada.  Her son’s swarthy foe was anxious to appear a mild and magnanimous man in her eyes, so it was with flattering servility and many smirking grins that he communicated to her the necessity for her quitting the house in which she had passed the longest and happiest half of her life, and no later than next day.

To his announcement that her private fortune would remain untouched, and that she would be at liberty to reside in Memphis or to go to her own house in Alexandria, she indifferently replied that “she should see.”

She then enquired whether the Arabs had yet succeeded in capturing her son.

“Not actually,” replied the Vekeel.  “But we know where he is hiding, and by to-morrow or the next day we shall lay hands on the unhappy young man.”

But, as he spoke, the widow detected a malicious gleam in his eyes to which, so far, he had tried to give a sympathetic expression, and she went on with a slight shake of the bead:  “Then it is a case of life and death?”

“Compose yourself, noble lady,” was the reply.  “Of death alone.”

Neforis looked up to heaven and for some minutes did not speak; then she asked: 

“And who has accused him of robbery?” “The head of his own Church. . . .”

“Benjamin?” she murmured with a peculiar smile.  Only yesterday she had made her will in favor of the patriarch and the Church.  “If Benjamin could see that,” said she to herself, “he would change his views of you and your people, and have prayers constantly said for us.”

As she spoke no more the Vekeel sat looking at her inquisitively and somewhat at a loss, till at length she rose, and with no little dignity dismissed him, remarking that now their business was at an end and she had nothing further to say to him.

This closed the interview; and as the Vekeel quitted the fountain-room he muttered to himself:  “What a woman!  Either she is possessed and her brain is crazed, or she is of a rarely heroic pattern.”

Neforis was supported to her own room; when she was in bed she desired her maid to bring a small box out of her chest and place it on the little table containing medicines by the bead of the couch.

As soon as she was alone she took out two letters which George had written to her before their marriage, and a poem which Orion had once addressed to her; she tried to read them, but the words danced before her eyes, and she was forced to lay them aside.  She took up a little packet containing hair cut from the heads of her sons after death, and a lock of her husband’s.  She gazed on these dear memorials with rapt tenderness, and now the poppy juice began to take effect:  the images of those departed ones rose clear in her mind, and she was as near to them as though they were standing in living actuality by her side.