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Updated: May 8, 2025
"Are ye lepers?" she asked in a frightened voice. "Nay, we are fugitives," Rachel answered. "Fugitives! What strait brought you to seek such asylum as this?" Again a speaking pause. "Who art thou, Lady?" Rachel asked, at last. "I am Masanath, daughter of Har-hat, fan-bearer to the Pharaoh." "And thou art a friend of the oppressed?" the Israelite continued.
Wild shrieks and husky broken shouts swept up from all quarters of the town, and the whole air was full of a vast murmur of many voices, calling and wailing, excited, tremulous and full of fear. Masanath passed into the outer room to the window that looked upon the city.
"Nay! Menes, lend me thy word. Of all Set-given, pitiless, atrocious edicts, that is the cruelest! Shame on thee!" At her first words, Rameses raised himself from his attitude of languor into an upright and intensely alert position. The company ceased to breathe, but Kenkenes heaved a soundless sigh of relief. Masanath had uttered his denunciations for him.
Alas! the wound to the daughter-love in Masanath! On the morrow she departeth for Tanis where she will wed with the Prince Rameses." Kenkenes' hands fell to his sides. "Nay, now! Of a surety, this is the maddest caprice the Hathors ever wrought. In the house of thine enemy! Well for me I did not know it! I should have died from very apprehension.
The light had died in the prince's eyes, the exultation was gone from his countenance. He knew what thoughts were uppermost in the mind of Masanath, and the tyrant had spoken truly to her long ago, when he said his heart might be hurt. His brow contracted with an expression of actual pain and he turned with a fierce movement as if to command the rejoicings to be still.
"Thou hast come to conduct me to court?" "That is the gracious will of my master." Masanath half rose from her seat. "When?" she asked almost inaudibly. "In twenty days; no more. I have a mission to perform and shall go hence immediately. But I shall return in twenty days, never fear, my Lady." Masanath saw that he mocked her. Her wrath was an effective counter-irritant for her trouble.
"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.
"Remember, I pray thee," the captain replied, riding near to her, "that I bring thee this for thine own sake not for the love of tale-bearing. On the counsel of Rameses, this day the Pharaoh sentenced Seti to banishment for a year to the mines of Libya " "To the mines!" Masanath cried in horror. "Not as a laborer. Nay, the sentence was not so harsh. But as a scribe to the governor over them."
"But be thou assured," the prince continued grimly, "that only so long as Masanath is not yet mine, shall I endure him. After that he shall fall as never knave fell or so deserved to fall before. Aye, but stay, Hotep. I have not done. I have some small grain of hope for this unfortunate friend of ours. The marriage hath been delayed.
I doubt not he knows more than you or I, Rachel." To Masanath's dismay the Israelite flung herself face down on the rugs and wept. "He is not dead; he is not dead," she cried. The collapse of a composure so strong and bridled filled Masanath with consternation.
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