How curious was the lot of all three of them! How strangely had they been exalted! She, the orphan ward of the Essenes, was now a great and wealthy lady with everything her heart could desire--except one thing, indeed, which it desired most of all.

And Marcus, the debt-saddled Roman soldier of fortune, he also, it seemed, had suddenly become great and wealthy, pomps that he held at the price of playing some fool's part in a temple to satisfy the whimsy of an Imperial madman.
Caleb, too, had found fortune, and in these tumultuous times risen suddenly to place and power.

All three of them were seated upon pinnacles, but as Miriam felt, they were pinnacles of snow, which for aught she knew, might be melted by the very sun of their prosperity.

She was young, she had little experience, yet as Miriam sat there watching the changeful sea, there came upon her a great sense of the instability of things, and an instinctive knowledge of their vanity.

The men who were great one day, whose names sounded in the mouths of all, the next had vanished, disgraced or dead.