a child.  The gates of the temple were locked, so that no one could get into the court; yet there is a child there, lying on the altar!” “What say you?” said his wife; “what can be the meaning of it?” So they both hastened to the temple, and when Potipherah opened the door of the courtyard, they saw, partly at least, how the wonder had happened; for now there was an eagle perched upon the altar with its wings spread out over the child—­it was a little girl, quite newly born—­to protect it.  They guessed that it was the eagle that had brought the child, but, of course, they could not tell whose it was.  It was wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and these Potipherah’s wife kept carefully by her; for she thought the time might come when they might be recognised by the parents of the little child; and indeed, years afterwards, this proved to be the case.

In the meantime Potipherah and his wife kept the child and brought her up, and treated her as their daughter; and they called her Aseneth.

She grew up to be very beautiful; she was quite unlike an Egyptian girl, and might have been taken for a Hebrew maiden:  tall as Sarah and lovely as Rebekah or Rachel; so beautiful, in fact, that all the sons of the princes and nobles of Egypt were in love with her, and even the son of King Pharaoh himself said to his father, “Give me Aseneth, the daughter of Potipherah, to wife.”  But Pharaoh said, “Nay, my son, she is not of your rank; you must marry a queen; remember, the daughter of the King of Moab is affianced to you.”

But besides being very beautiful, Aseneth was exceedingly proud.  There was not a man of all the young nobles whom she would hear of, much less look at.  Indeed, hardly any man in Egypt except her own father had ever seen her face; for she lived apart with the maidens who waited on her, in a lofty tower which her father had built specially for her.  It was really a noble palace, with ten great rooms, one over the other.  The first room was paved with porphyry and lined with slabs of coloured marbles, and the roof was of gold:  and it was a kind of chapel for Aseneth.  It had golden and silver images of all the gods of Egypt, and Aseneth worshipped them and burnt incense to them every day.  The second chamber was Aseneth’s own.  In it were all her jewels and rich robes and fine linen.  In the third were stored the provisions of the house and every delicious fruit or sweetmeat that could be got from any part of the world.  The other seven chambers belonged to the seven maidens who lived with Aseneth and tended her.  They were all of one age, and as fair as the stars of heaven, and Aseneth loved them dearly.

But to come back to Aseneth’s own chamber, which was the most splendid of all.  It had three windows, one looking out upon the garden of the tower towards the east, and another towards the south, and the third towards the high-road.  Opposite the eastern window stood a golden bed, with a coverlet woven of gold and purple and fine linen.