At the hour appointed, the Armenian physician despatched the Jewish doctor to the Bey’s gates, where he was admitted, and received with as much respect as the Turk could bring his mind to show towards unbelievers, and the business being properly premised, the father told the Jew how his daughter was affected, and asked if he might hope for her recovery.

“With great care and cunning skill, perhaps so,” said the Jew, from out his overgrown beard.

“If this can be accomplished through thy means, I make thee rich for life,” said the Bey.

“We can but try,” said the Jew, “and hope for the best.  Lead me to thy daughter.”

The Bey conducted the leech to his daughter’s apartment, and bidding her tell freely all her pains and ills, left the Jew to study her case, while he retired once more to silent converse with himself.

“You are ill,” said the Jew, addressing Zillah, while he seated himself and rested his head upon his staff.

“Yes, I am indeed.”

“And yet methinks no physical harm is visible in thy person.  The pain is in the heart?”

“You speak truly,” said Zillah, with a sigh—­“I am very unhappy.”

“You love?”

“I do.”

“And art loved again?”

“Truly, I believe so.”

“Then, whencefore art thou unhappy; reciprocal love begets not unhappiness?”

“True, good leech; but he whom I love so well is a Christian, and I can hold no communication with him, much less even hope to be his wife.”

“Do you love him so well that you would leave home, father, everything, for him?” asked the Jew.

“Alas! it would be hard to leave my father but still am I so wholly his, I would do even so.”

“Then may you be happy yet,” said he, who spoke to her, as he tossed back the hood of his gaberdine, and removed the false hair that he wore, presenting the features of young Selim, whom she loved!

“How is this possible?” she said, between her sobs and smiles of joy; “my father told me that the Armenian recommended you for your skill in the healing art.”

“He is my friend, the man who taught me my religion, my everything, and the only confidant I have in all Constantinople.  To him I told the grief of my heart at our separation; by chance your father called on him for counsel; he knew the Bey, and his mind suggested that I was the true physician whom you needed, and fabricating the story of my profession, he sent me hither.”

The fair young girl gazed at him she loved, and wept with joy, and with her hands held tremblingly in his own, Selim told her of a plan he had formed for their escape from the city to some distant land where they might live together unmolested and happy in each other’s society.  He explained to her that he should tell her father that it was necessary for him to administer certain medicines to her beneath the rays of the moon, and that while she was strolling with him thus the water’s edge, he would have a boat ready and at a favorable moment jumping into this, they would speed away.