CHAPTER IV.
THE light came in in streaks through the curtained windows of the highest, most gorgeous apartment in the house of Caiaphas, lighting up the costly silks which hung above the couches, and the amber-coloured robe of his handsome daughter, the dark-eyed Rebekah. After the Magdalene, with whom, of course, she was never mentioned in the same breath, she was the loveliest woman in Judæa. The Jewish nose had halted midway down the face in Grecian fashion, and the olive skin, protected from almost every ray of sun, had grown of an opaque creamy whiteness, faintly stained as though by some sweet pink flower; and the eyes no one had ever quite known what was their colour; for, though they looked almost black and were fringed with the long, curling Jewish lash, still some declared that, if she looked upwards, they were blue as sapphire, yet that, when she was angry, they flashed ruby red. The beautiful face, the rounded chin of youth, the sweet, smiling mouth, like early barley in a coral pod, betrayed not yet the heritage of soul, for all the pride of a long line of priests, the subtlety of the Pharisees and Sadducees, and the crafty cunning of Annas mingled in the stream that coursed through those blue veins.
Of an intriguing spirit and brought up amongst
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