Our strong passions break into a thousand
purposes: women have one. Their love is dangerous, but their hate is
fatal.
'See! a boat bounding on the waters. On such a night, but one would dare
to venture.'
Now visible, now in darkness, a single lantern at the prow, Jabaster
watched with some anxiety the slight bark buffeting the waves. A flash
of lightning illumined the whole river, and tipped with a spectral light
even the distant piles of building. The boat and the toiling figure
of the single rower were distinctly perceptible. Now all again was
darkness; the wind suddenly subsided; in a few minutes the plash of the
oars was audible, and the boat apparently stopped beneath the palace.
There was a knocking at the private portal.
'Who knocks?' enquired Jabaster.
'A friend to Israel.'
'Abidan, by his voice. Art thou alone?'
'The prophetess is with me; only she.'
'A moment. I'll open the gate. Draw the boat within the arch.'
Jabaster descended from the gallery, and in a few moments returned with
two visitors: the youthful prophetess Esther, and her companion, a
man short in stature, but with a powerful and well-knit frame. His
countenance was melancholy, and, with harshness in the lower part, not
without a degree of pensive beauty in the broad clear brow and sunken
eyes, unusual in Oriental visages.
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