Ben Aboo had often bethought him of the beautiful girl since he committed her father to prison.He cherished schemes concerning her which he did not share with his wife Katrina.But he had hitherto been withheld by two considerations: the first being that he was beset with difficulties arising out of the demands of the Sultan for more money than he could find, and the next that he foresaw the necessity that might perchance arise of recalling Israel to his post.
Out of these grave bedevilments he had extricated himself at length by imposing dues on certain tribes of Reefians, who had never yet acknowledged the Sultan's authority, and by calling on the Sultan's army to enforce them.The Sultan had come in answer to his summons, the Reefians had been routed, their villages burnt, and that morning at daybreak he had received a message saying that Abd er-Rahman intended to keep the feast of the Moolood at Tetuan.So this capture of Naomi was the luckiest chance that could have befallen him at such a moment.
She should witness to the Prophet; her father, the Jew, would thereby lose his rights in her; and he himself, as her sole guardian, would present her as a peace-offering to the Sultan on crossing the boundary of his bashalic.
Such was the new plan which Ben Aboo straightway conceived at hearing the news of Habeebah, and in another moment he had propounded it to Katrina.But when Naomi came into the patio, looking so soft, so timid, so tired, yet so beautiful, so unlike his own painted beauties, with the light of the dawn on her open face, with her clear eyes and the sweet mouth of a child, his evil passions had all they could do not to go back to his former scheme.