Page:By order of the Czar.djvu/33

Rh His people suffered round about them, and more especially asking for the protection of this house of Klosstock, and of His servant Anna, light of her father's old age, and soon with His favor to be a wife unto the humble petitioner, and so on — a prayer of faith and hope and humility, to which Klosstock said "Amen," and Ferrari "So mote it be!"

Then there was a dead pause, and the three men stood up and listened, as if they expected an answer to the rabbi's prayer in the shape of some good omen or token of peace. But all was still as death, except for the howl of some restless dog in a distant street.

The moon had risen and was pouring its beams into her chamber as Anna set down her lamp upon a quaint old chest by the window. She sat right in the midst of the lunar radiance and thought how beautiful it was, how lovely was life — her life — what rich blessings God had lavished upon her. There was not a single tremor of fear in her heart. If trouble was coming to Czarovna, she and those she most loved would be able to leave it. It would have been too much to have expected her to think of any others at that moment besides her father and her lover. Nor could she realize the bitterness of a persecution which she had not felt, and which Czarovna had not known in her time; and while the rabbi had spoken of these things, he had been jealous not to overshadow Anna's happiness with tales of horrors, the recitation of which, while they might cast a shadow upon her thoughts, could serve no useful purpose. For she was born with sensibilities and a sympathetic nature, and would find in life itself, as she grew older, quite enough that was sad, without lavishing her sympathies upon sorrows and troubles she could neither influence, amend, nor control.

Anna did not dream of the shadowy form that crept out of the moonlight, crouching beneath her window, as