The maiden kept her silent promise; faithfully she obeyed the hest of Hadassah. Seldom as possible did she enter the room which communicated with the hiding-place of Lycidas, and never save in the company of her aged relative. Zarah's wheel was carried to her sleeping apartment; heat and discomfort were made no excuse for leaving the more secluded portions of the small and inconvenient dwelling. Zarah, a voluntary prisoner, avoiding seeing him who appeared to her to be an embodiment of all that was beautiful in form, and brilliant in mind, one whose society resembled the light which glorifies every object on which it may fall. And Zarah did not, as many maidens in her place might have done, punish Hadassah for throwing her influence into the scale of duty, by showing her the extent of the sacrifice which she had required. The young girl, while her heart was bleeding, struggled to maintain a serene and placid mien. Hadassah never heard Zarah sigh, never surprised her in tears. No duty was neglected, no work left undone; nay, Zarah spun more busily than ever, for the support of the stranger was a drain on the scanty resources of Hadassah, and to work for him and pray for him was the sole indulgence which Zarah could allow herself without self-reproach. She tried--how arduous was the effort!--even to turn her thoughts from the subject which was to her as the forbidden fruit was to Eve. The chasm which divided Abraham's daughter from the heathen was one over which, as Zarah knew, it would be sinful to throw even the rainbow bridge of imagination. She must force her mind from approaching the dangerous brink. How many of the Psalms of David, always those most mournful in their tone, Zarah repeated to herself, to bring solace to her spirit by day, or sleep to her eyelids by night. While Judas Maccabeus was maintaining a gallant struggle against the enemies of his country, conquering, but through much stern endurance, Zarah, with the same faith and obedience as animated the warrior, was keeping up a more painful fight against the heathen in her own gentle heart.