His only reply was: “Is there no liberty of choice in the marriages of Israel? Will you decide without consulting her, whom this contract is to render happy or miserable while she lives?” He rushed from the room. Miriam came—but alone. Her daughter had wandered out into one of our many gardens. She received Eleazar with sisterly fondness, but her features wore the air of constraint. She heard the mission, but “she had no opinion to give in the absence of Salome. She knew too well the happiness of having chosen for herself to wish to force the consent of her child. Let Salome be consulted.” The flourish of music and the trampling of horses broke up our reluctant conference. Jubal had already come with a crowd of his friends. We hastened to receive him at the porch, and he bounded into the court on his richly caparisoned barb, at the head of a troop in festal habiliments. The men of Israel loved pomp of dress and handsome steeds. The group before me might have made a body-guard for a Persian king. Jubal had long looked on my daughter with the admiration due to her singular beauty; it was the custom to wed within our tribe; he was the favorite and the heir of her uncle; she had never absolutely banished him from her presence, and in the buoyancy of natural spirits, the boldness of a temperament born for a soldier, and perhaps in the allowable consciousness of a showy form, he had admitted none of the perplexities of a trembling lover. Salome was at length announced, and the proposed husband was left to plead his own cause. CHAPTER XVII _A Declaration of Love_ [Sidenote: Salathiel Overhears Salome] We received the friends of our intended son with the accustomed hospitality, but to me the tumult of many voices, and even the sight of a crowd, however happy, still excited the old disturbances of a shaken mind. I left my guests to the care of Eleazar, and galloped into the fields to gather composure from the air of fruits and flowers. A homeward glance showed me, to my surprise, the whole troop mounted, and in another moment at speed across the hills. I hastened back. Miriam met me. My kinsman had openly disclaimed my alliance. Indignant and disappointed, I prepared to follow him and demand the cause of this insult. As I passed one of the pavilions, my daughter’s voice arrested me. She was talking to Constantius. Scorning mere curiosity, I yet was anxious for sincere explanation. I felt that if Salome had a wish which she feared to divulge to her father, this was my only hope of obtaining the knowledge. The voices were low, and I could, for a while, catch but a broken sentence. “I owed it to him,” said she, “not to deceive his partiality. He offered all that it could have done a Jewish maiden honor to receive—his heart, hand, and fortune.” “And you rejected them all?” said Constantius. “Have you no regrets for the lover—no fears of the father?”