“My friend Ammalat,” said I, “hasten where your heart calls you.  God grant that you may carry thither health and recovery, and bring back peace of mind!  A happy journey!”

“Farewell, my benefactor,” he cried, deeply touched, “farewell, and perhaps for ever!  I will not return to life, if Allah takes from me my Seltanetta.  May God keep you!”

He took the wounded Avaretz to the Hakim Ibrahim, received the medicinal herb according to the Khan’s prescription, and in an hour Ammalat Bek, with four noukers, rode out of Derbend.

And so the riddle is guessed—­he loves.  This is unfortunate, but what is yet worse, he is beloved in return.  I fancy, my love, that I see your astonishment.  “Can that be a misfortune to another, which to you is happiness?” you ask.  A grain of patience, my soul’s angel!  The Khan, the father of Seltanetta, is the irreconcilable foe of Russia, and the more so because, having been distinguished by the favour of the Czar, he has turned a traitor; consequently a marriage is possible only on condition of Ammalat’s betraying the Russians, or in case of the Khan’s submission and pardon—­both cases being far from probable.  I myself have experienced misery and hopelessness in love; I have shed many tears on my lonely pillow; often have I thirsted for the shade of the grave, to cool my anguished heart!  Can I, then, help, pitying this youth, the object of my disinterested regard, and lamenting his hopeless love?  But this will not build a bridge to good-fortune; and I therefore think, that if he had not the ill-luck to be beloved in return, he would by degrees forget her.

“But,” you say, (and methinks I hear your silvery voice, and am revelling in your angel’s smile,) “but circumstances may change for them, as they have changed for us.  Is it possible that misfortune alone has the privilege of being eternal in the world?”

I do not dispute this, my beloved, but I confess with a sigh that I am in doubt.  I even fear for them and for ourselves.  Destiny smiles before us, hope chaunts sweet music—­but destiny is a sea—­hope but a sea-syren; deceitful is the calm of the one, fatal are the promises of the other.  All appears to aid our union—­but are we yet together?  I know not why, lovely Mary, but a chill penetrates my breast, amid the warm fountains of future bliss, and the idea of our meeting has lost its distinctness.  But all this will pass away, all will change into happiness, when I press your hand to my lips, your heart to mine.  The rainbow shines yet brighter on the dark field of the cloud, and the happiest moments of life are but the anticipations of sorrow.

CHAPTER VIII.

Ammalat knocked up two horses, and left two of his noukers on the road, so that at the end of the second day he was not far from Khounzakh.  At each stride his impatience grew stronger, and with each stride increased his fear of not finding his beloved amongst the living.  A fit of trembling came over him when from the rocks the tops of the Khan’s tower arose before him.  His eyes grew dark.  “Shall I meet there life or death?” he whispered to himself, and arousing a desperate courage, he urged his horse to a gallop.