Ancient custom, to have her ears cut off
     Caught the infection and had to laugh whether she would or no
     Gave them a claim on your person and also on your sorrows
     How could they find so much pleasure in such folly
     Of two evils it is wise to choose the lesser
     Prepared for the worst; then you are armed against failure
     Who can hope to win love that gives none
     Who can take pleasure in always seeing a gloomy face?

THE BRIDE OF THE NILE

By Georg Ebers

Volume 3.

CHAPTER X.

After the great excitement of the night Paula had thrown herself on her bed with throbbing pulses.  Sleep would not come to her, and so at rather more than two hours after sunrise she went to the window to close the shutters.  As she did so she looked out, and she saw Hiram leap into a boat and push the light bark from the shore.  She dared neither signal nor call to him; but when the faithful soul had reached open water he looked back at her window, recognized her in her white morning dress and flourished the oar high in the air.  This could only mean that he had fulfilled his commission and sold her jewel.  Now he was going to the other side to engage the Nabathaean.

When she had closed the shutters and darkened the room she again lay down.  Youth asserted its rights the weary girl fell into deep, dreamless slumbers.

When she woke, with the heat drops on her forehead, the sun was nearly at the meridian, only an hour till the Ariston would be served, the Greek breakfast, the first meal in the morning, which the family eat together as they also did the principal meal later in the clay.  She had never yet failed to appear, and her absence would excite remark.

The governor’s household, like that of every Egyptian of rank, was conducted more on the Greek than the Egyptian plan; and this was the case not merely as regarded the meals but in many other things, and especially the language spoken.  From the Mukaukas himself down to the youngest member of the family, all spoke Greek among themselves, and Coptic, the old native dialect, only to the servants.  Nay, many borrowed and foreign words had already crept into use in the Coptic.

The governor’s granddaughter, pretty little Mary, had learnt to speak Greek fluently and correctly before she spoke Coptic, but when Paula had first arrived she could not as yet write the beautiful language of Greece with due accuracy.  Paula loved children; she longed for some occupation, and she had therefore volunteered to instruct the little girl in the art.  At first her hosts had seemed pleased that she should render this service, but ere long the relation between the Lady Neforis and her husband’s niece had taken the unpleasant aspect which it was destined to retain.  She had put a stop to the lessons, and the reason she had assigned for this insulting step was that Paula had dictated to her pupil long sentences out of her Orthodox Greek prayerbook.  This, it was true, she had done; but without the smallest concealment; and the passages she had chosen had contained nothing but what must elevate the soul of every Christian, of whatever confession.