feradjee and the horrid yashmack; and then her fine figure appeared in a close velvet jacket, sleeved only to the elbow, cut low at the neck and open at the bosom; and her hair was gathered about her beautiful head in massive braids, like perfumed and sable silk. She trembled and blushed excessively, for, by the Mohammedan law, aged women who are past the time of marriage alone may lay this veil aside.

Her white neck and arms were encircled by strings of Turkish rose pearls, made from the leaves of freshly-culled roses, bruised to a paste, and dried and rolled in oil of roses and musk, and which, being thus beautifully polished and pleasantly perfumed, are favourite ornaments in the East.

She had all that combination of spiritual and voluptuous loveliness which her Grecian sires of old worshipped in the olive-groves of Paphos, and in the temples of Cyprus and Cytheria, when the power of Juno's rival was supreme.

I drew her gently towards me, but still she averted her timid and downcast face.

'Iola-why this change?' I asked, in a pettish tone; have you ceased to love me now?'

'I have not ceased to love you,' she answered, while trembling painfully; 'at first you merely struck my fancy, when passing daily in the castle-yard, where you seemed so different in air, so free in step and bearing, from the slow, heavy-headed, and crooklegged soldiers of Hussein; but now you-you-' What?'

'Have keenly touched my heart. Alas!' she continued, weeping; now I am more a slave than ever the piastres of Hussein, or the promise I gave him before the Kadi, made me!'

'Be wary, Iola-remember that your servants may hear us, and our position is full of danger.' 'There is no danger,' she replied, bitterly; they are all dumb-voiceless as marble statues.'

X

So.

'Dumb?'

6

Mutes-tongueless-and two are deaf, or rendered

'Horrible! For what reason?"

To prevent their being indiscreet.' 'A wise precaution.'

So my

husband thinks-but a cruel one.' After a pause, she added, 'Would to Allah that he had left me in the care of his friend, the Moolah Moustapha!'

'Why?'

'Can you ask me? The Moolah is said to know -like Solymon Ebn Daood-the language of the birds; and every kind of secret knowledge; and thus he had watched over the wanderings of my heart.'

Nay, dearest Iola, these scruples and coquettish regrets come somewhat late-and one kiss-'

Bismillah! In the name of the most Merciful, touch me not!' she exclaimed, with a coy alarm that was rather chilling; but she was too late: my kiss was on her pouting lip, and she did not repulse me -for she felt assured, by the night and the silence around us, that no ear was there to overhear us, and no mortal eye but mine to see her unveiled beauty. Here endeth the first lesson.

CHAPTER XLIV.

TEMPTATION AND FOLLY.

NEVER while life remains shall I forget the hours of delight I passed with Iola.

I know that it was wrong-exceedingly wrongand blamable in me to have yielded to the tempting peril of engaging in this flirtation-to give my regard

for Iola its mildest term-but what could I do? And having once yielded to the allurement, and encouraged her in it, how could I fly or avoid her?

I met her no more at the Ruined Hermitage, or at the green City of the Silent, for such interviews were full of peril; but I met her again and again, in the seclusion of her own apartments, into which not even the tongueless and mutilated slaves of Hussein could penetrate without a signal being given and permission accorded from within. Thus we had an interview every evening, and had much delightful conversation, and many an hour of mute reverie.

How strange and alluring were those long, deep, and dangerous reveries, which were full of beatings of the heart, and tender meanings which the pen cannot depict, and no written language can convey!

My word plighted to the absent Hussein-my honour, and more than all, her honour-yea, her very life, were in peril, yet I trifled with both, like the heedless, reckless, and it may be, selfish boy I was! Poor Iola!

I related the story of her brother's desertion, recapture, trial, and the death he suffered so courageously in our presence at Heraclea. I mentioned the two little incidents which brought me in personal contact with him; first in the public khan, and secondly at the last terrible scene in the valley of the mosque, where from his dead hand I took the little coral cross, which by a strange course of events I was now enabled to suspend upon the bosom of his sister; and as I did so, I thought of all that highspirited and noble Albanian soldier would have felt had he seen that sister, now a Mahommedan, (the wife of one of those barbarous Osmanli who pistolled his stately mother at Acre,) and hanging in all her loveliness, dissolved in tears and grief upon the bosom of a stranger—a soldier of Frangistan!

I deemed it well for Hussein, well for Iola, and particularly fortunate for myself, that the fiery young lieutenant of Albanians was sleeping in his quiet grave, where the slaves of the Mir Alai Saïd had laid him.

Tempered by politeness, and by that respect and deference to a female which have come down to us from the days of the Crusaders and the Cavaliers, the manner of a European lover is so different from the bearing of an Oriental one, that there can be little wonder if the heart of a Mahommedan woman is easily won by the stiff-hatted, tight-coated, and longtrousered denizen of that ample and mysterious district known to her only as Frangistan. In the matter of love and wedlock, the Turkish woman has as little idea of freedom as the Turk has of the arguments advanced by S. Bufford, gent.-a certain learned pundit, who, in the reign of King William III., wrote an Essay against persons marrying without their own

consent.'

Oh, that I had the right to love you, as I have the right to hate the Yuze Bashi Hussein!' said Iola, after one of her long silences. 'Oh the odious! May the heel of my slipper be ever on his mouthand yet and yet he is my husband!'

I wince always at that word in your pretty mouth, Iola !'

In loving you, I cease to love him-if indeed I ever loved him. Allah did not create woman with two hearts-with one under each breast, as the Moolah Moustapha affirms.'

But our love is full of sadness as well as peril, Iola-for a day is coming when I must leave you.'

6

Oh, leave me not!' she exclaimed, passionately. 'Must my love be sacrificed to this coarse and untutored Osmanli? The day after you leave me I shall have ceased to live.'

"Why?-when?"

• When ordered-for I, too, have Yuze Bashis and Mir Alais and Pashas who command me.'

6

By the love with which you have inspired me!' she said in a piercing whisper, with her black eyes flashing in brilliance through their tears; 'I conjure you to take me with you, for I cannot live without you, and without you I must die!'

With these words she threw herself upon my breast, heedless of everything.

'I will take you with me, Iola, if I can—'

Nay you must you shall!'

Yes yes, at all hazards.'

"Why should I die so young?'

You will go with me-I promise you,' I replied, heedless of the future; and then she gave me a smile of confiding fondness that would have melted the heart of our old friend Bluebeard.

'My husband will be here anon, and his jealousy—' 'Well-fear him not, Iola; jealousy gives a relish to love just as musk does to sherbet, or pepper to a kabob,' said I, gaily.

But alas,' said she, with a shudder, the jealousy, of a Turk is terrible! Could I teach Hussein that love and respect-or love and affection are two distinct sentiments?'

'Give me but the love, Iola, and bestow the affection on whom you please.'

'Allah!' she exclaimed, with a shudder, and a gleam of terror in her expressive eyes, as she shrunk from my arm; 'what if you should be Hussein?'

‘I Hussein—I the Yuze Bashi?' I asked, in astonishment.

'Yes-O Mahmoud! there is a strange sparkle in your eye.'

'How could such a thing be?' I asked, smiling at her simplicity.

'Genii give men the power to assume the forms,