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Ivanhoe woke up only in the evening. To his great surprise he found himself in a room decorated in the Eastern fashion. Then an Eastern lady appeared who made a sign showing that he should be silent and examined his wound. She performed her task with a graceful and dignified simplicity and modesty.

“Gentle maiden,” began Ivanhoe in the Arabian tongue, which he thought most likely to be understood by the lady in a turban.

But he was interrupted by his beautiful doctor, who could not suppress a smile in spite of her usual melancholy. “I am from England, Sir Knight, and speak the English language, although my dress and my ancestors belong to another climate.”

“Noble lady,” again the Knight of Ivanhoe began; and again Rebecca interrupted him.

“Don’t call me noble, Sir Knight,” she said, “You should know that I am Jewish. I am the daughter of that Isaac of York, to whom you were lately a good and kind lord. It well becomes him, and those of his household, to take care of your wound.”

She informed him of the necessity they were under of removing to York, and of her father’s resolution to transport him there, and tend him in his own house until his health should be restored. Ivanhoe shared the prejudices against the Jews and didn’t want to stay in a Jewish house. Rebecca had an answer to that.

“Sir Knight, if you want me to be your doctor, you cannot change your lodging. No Christian doctor could let you fight again within a month.”

“And how soon will you enable me to wear my armour?” said Ivanhoe, impatiently.

“Within eight days, if you are patient and obey my directions,” replied Rebecca.

“It is no time for me or any true knight,” said Wilfred, “to be sick and in bed.”

“You will put on your armour on the eighth day,” said Rebecca, “if you give me one reward.”

“If it is within my power,” replied Ivanhoe, “I will give it thankfully.”

“I will only ask you,” answered Rebecca, “to believe that a Jew can do good service to a Christian without any other reward than the blessing of the Great Father who made us all.”

When the Jew, with his daughter and her wounded patient were captured by the Norman party, De Bracy looked into the litter and discovered to his surprise that the litter contained a wounded man, who called himself to be Wilfred of Ivanhoe.

The ideas of chivalrous honour, which never completely abandoned De Bracy, prohibited him from doing the knight any injury in his defenceless condition or betraying him to Front-de-Boeuf. So De Bracy commanded two of his own squires to take care of the litter and to carry Ivanhoe under the name of a wounded comrade to a distant apartment in the castle. When Front-de-Boeuf saw them, he ordered them to go to the walls and told Urfried to look after the wounded man. The old woman was easily persuaded to trust Rebecca with the care of her patient.

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