ciently expressed her wonder and alarm.

Simonides lifted his left hand, and gave it into hers, lying lovingly
upon his shoulder, and said, dispassionately, "I have grown old in
dealing with men--old before my time. If he who told thee that whereof
thou speakest was a friend acquainted with my history, and spoke of
it not harshly, he must have persuaded thee that I could not be else
than a man distrustful of my kind. The God of Israel help him who,
at the end of life, is constrained to acknowledge so much! My loves
are few, but they are. One of them is a soul which"--he carried the
hand holding his to his lips, in manner unmistakable--"a soul which
to this time has been unselfishly mine, and such sweet comfort that,
were it taken from me, I would die."

Esther's head drooped until her cheek touched his.

"The other love is but a memory; of which I will say further that,
like a benison of the Lord, it hath a compass to contain a whole
family, if only"--his voice lowered and trembled--"if only I knew
where they were."

Ben-Hur's face suffused, and, advancing a step, he cried, impulsively,
"My mother and sister! Oh, it is of them you speak!"

Esther, as if spoken to, raised her head; but Simonides returned
to his calm, and answered, coldly, "Hear me to the end. Because I am
that I am, and because of the loves of which I have spoken, before I
make return to thy demand touching my relations to the Prince Hur,
and as something which of right should come first, do thou show me
proofs of who thou art. Is thy witness in writing? Or cometh it in
person?"

The demand was plain, and the right of it indisputable. Ben-Hur
blushed, clasped his hands, stammered, and turned away at loss.
Simonides pressed him.

"The proofs, the proofs, I say! Set them before me--lay them in
my hands!"

Yet Ben-Hur had no answer. He had not anticipated the requirement;
and, now that it was made, to him as never before came the awful
fact that the three years in the galley had carried away all the
proofs of his identity; mother and sister gone, he did not live in
the knowledge of any human being. Many there were acquainted with
him, but that was all. Had Quintus Arrius been present, what could
he have said more than where he found him, and that he believed the
pretender to be the son of Hur? But, as will presently appear in full,
the brave Roman sailor was dead. Judah had felt the loneliness before;
to the core of life the sense struck him now.