The bell from an English man-of-war that lay but an arrow’s shot off, had sounded the middle watch before Komel left the spot where she had hoped once more to hear those to her enchanting sounds.  She arose and walked away with reluctant steps from the place towards the palace, leaving the idiot boy by himself.  But scarcely had she gone from sight, before he jumped to his feet, leaped once more to the top of the wall, looked off with apparent earnestness among the shipping and along the shore of the sparkling waters, where the moon lay in long rays of silver light upon it, and then dropping once more to the ground, came to the spot where Komel had sat, and lying down there, slept, or seemed to do so.

Here Komel came night after night, but the song was no more repeated.  Either the sentry’s shot had effectually frightened away the serenader, or else he had not come hither with any fixed object connected with his song.  In either case the poor girl felt unhappy and disappointed in the matter, and her companions saw a cloud of care upon her fair face.  The Sultan, too, marked this, and seemed to wonder that time did not heal the wounded spirit of his slave.  His kindly endeavors to please and render her content bore no fruit of success.  She avoided him now; the feeling of gratitude that she had at first entertained towards him, had given way to one of deep but silent hatred.

The monarch could read as much in her face whenever they chanced to meet, and the feelings of tenderness which he had entertained for her were also changing, and he felt that he should soon exercise the right of a master if he could make no impression upon the beautiful Circassian as a lover.

“You treat me with coldness, Komel,” he said to her, reproachfully.

“Our actions are only truthful when they speak the language of the heart,” replied she.

“You forget my forbearance.”

“I forget nothing, but remember constantly too much,” she replied.

“It may be, Komel, that you do not remember on thing, which it is necessary to recall to you mind.  You are my slave!”

Leaving the Sultan and his household, we will turn once more to Capt.  Selim, and see with what success he treated his fair patient, the old Bey’s daughter, in his assumed character of a Jewish leech.

CHAPTER XI.

The elopement.

The palace of the old Bey, Zillah’s father, was one of those gilded, pagoda-like buildings, which, in any other climate or any other spot in the wide world, would have looked foolish, from its profusion of latticed external ornaments, and the filagree work that covered every angle and point, more after the fashion of a child’s toy than the work most appropriate for a dwelling house.  But here, on the banks of the Bosphorus, in sight of Constantinople, and within the dominion of that oriental people, it was appropriate in every belonging, and seemed just what a Turkish palace should be.