loveliness, and was wholly foreign to the voluptuous and dreamy languor
of Moorish maidens; Leila had been educated, and the statue had received
a soul.

After a few minutes of intense suspense, she again stole to the lattice,
gently unclosed it, and looked forth. Far, through an opening amidst the
trees, she descried for a single moment the erect and stately figure of
her lover, darkening the moonshine on the sward, as now, quitting his
fruitless search, he turned his lingering gaze towards the lattice of his
beloved: the thick and interlacing foliage quickly hid him from her eyes;
but Leila had seen enough--she turned within, and said, as grateful tears
trickled clown her cheeks, and she sank on her knees upon the piled
cushions of the chamber: "God of my fathers! I bless Thee--he is safe!"

"And yet (she added, as a painful thought crossed her), how may I pray
for him? we kneel not to the same Divinity; and I have been taught to
loathe and shudder at his creed! Alas! how will this end? Fatal was the
hour when he first beheld me in yonder gardens; more fatal still the hour
in which he crossed the barrier, and told Leila that she was beloved by
the hero whose arm was the shelter, whose name is the blessing, of
Granada. Ah, me! Ah, me!"

The young maiden covered her face with her hands, and sank into a
passionate reverie, broken only by her sobs. Some time had passed in
this undisturbed indulgence of her grief, when the arras was gently put
aside, and a man, of remarkable garb and mien, advanced into the chamber,
pausing as he beheld her dejected attitude, and gazing on her with a look
on which pity and tenderness seemed to struggle against habitual severity
and sternness.