flowers, when one of those fairy-like children of the harem,
scarcely older than herself, came tripping with light and
thoughtless steps towards her, and detecting her saddened mood,
kissed way the tears that still lingered upon her cheeks, and
binding a wreath of fresh and beautiful flowers about her head, lay
down in Lalla's lap and toyed with the stray buds, looking up into
her eyes with gentle love and tenderness.

How grateful were these delicate and beautiful manifestations of
feeling to the lonely-hearted slave.






CHAPTER III.

THE BEDOUIN ARABS.





It was one of those soft days, made up of nature's sweetest smiles,
of sunshine and gentle zephyrs, when sky, and sea, and shore were
radiant, and all the earth seemed glad, that a lone horseman sat
with the reins cast loosely upon the arching neck of his proud
Arabian, on the plain beyond the Armenian cemetery, in the suburbs
of Constantinople. The rider was dressed in the plainest attire of a