“And why should not something besides disappointment be my portion for once?  How could you have the heart to deprive me of the hope on which my poor heart still feeds?—­But I will not be robbed of it.  Your Paulus of Sinai is my lost father.  I feel it, I know it!  If I had not sold my pearls, the Nabathaean. . . .  But as it is.  When can you start, my good Hiram?”

“Not before a fort—­a fortnight at—­at—­at—­soonest,” said the man.  “I am in the governor’s service now, and the day after to-morrow is the great horse-fair at Niku.  The young master wants some stallions bought and there are our foals to. . . .”

“I will implore my uncle to-morrow, to spare you,” cried Paula.  “I will go on my knees to him.”

“He will not let him go,” said the nurse.  “Sebek the steward told him all about it from me before the hour of audience and tried to have Hiram released.”

“And he said.... ?”

“The lady Neforis said it was all a mere will-o’-the-wisp, and my lord agreed with her.  Then your uncle forbade Sebek to betray the matter to you, and sent word to me that he would possibly send Hiram to Sinai when the horse-fair was over.  So take patience, sweetheart.  What are two weeks, or at most three—­and then. . . .”

“But I shall die before then!” cried Paula.  “The Nabathaean, you say, is here and willing to go.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Then we will secure him,” said Paula resolutely.  Perpetua, however, who must have discussed the matter fully with her fellow-countryman, shook her head mournfully and said:  “He asks too much for us!”

She then explained that the man, being such a good linguist, had already been offered an engagement to conduct a caravan to Ctesiphon.  This would be a year’s pay to him, and he was not inclined to break off his negotiations with the merchant Hanno and search the deserts of Arabia Petraea for less than two thousand drachmae.

“Two thousand drachmae!” echoed Paula, looking down in distress and confusion; but she presently looked up and exclaimed with angry determination:  “How dare they keep from me that which is my own?  If my uncle refuses what I have to ask, and will ask, then the inevitable must happen, though for his sake it will grieve me; I must put my affairs in the hands of the judges.”

“The judges?” Perpetua smiled.  “But you cannot lay a complaint without your kyrios, and your uncle is yours.  Besides:  before they have settled the matter the messenger may have been to Ctesiphon and back, far as it is.”

Again her nurse entreated her to have patience till the horse-fair should be over.  Paula fixed her eyes on the ground.  She seemed quite crushed; but Perpetua started violently and Hiram drew back a step when she suddenly broke out in a loud, joyful cry of “Father in Heaven, I have what we need!”

“How, child, what?” asked the nurse, pressing her hand to her heart.  But Paula vouchsafed no information; she turned quickly to the Syrian: