given me,
and perhaps time will show you how profoundly respectful is the
adoration I profess for you. Rely upon me that I will deal in the best
manner with the cadi, and do you do the same with Halima. Believe me,
lady, since I have seen you, there has sprung up in my heart an assured
hope that we shall soon achieve our freedom; and so I commend you to
God's keeping, deferring to another time to tell you the events by which
fortune brought me to this place, after we were parted."

They now separated, Leonisa well pleased with Ricardo's modest
behaviour, and he overjoyed at having heard from her lips words unmixed
with harshness. Halima, meanwhile, had shut herself up in her room, and
was praying to Mahomet for Leonisa's success in the commission she had
given her. The cadi was in the mosque, burning, like his wife, with
desire, and anxiously awaiting the answer to be brought him by the slave
he had sent to speak to Leonisa, and whom Mahmoud was to admit to her
presence for that purpose, even though Halima was at home. Leonisa
inflamed Halima's impure desires, giving her very good hopes that Mario
would do all she wished, but telling her that two months must elapse
before he could consent to what he longed for even more than herself;
and that he asked that delay that he might complete a course of devotion
for the recovery of his freedom. Halima was satisfied with this excuse,
but begged Leonisa to tell her dear Mario to spare himself the trouble
and her the delay he proposed, for she would give him, at once, whatever
the cadi required for his ransom.

Before Ricardo went with his answer to his master, he consulted Mahmoud
as to what it should be. They agreed between them that it should be as
discouraging as possible, and that he should advise the cadi to take
the girl as soon as possible to Constantinople, and accomplish his
wishes on the way by fair means or by force. Moreover, that in order to
prevent the unpleasant consequences that might ensue from supplanting
the sultan, it would be well to purchase another slave, then pretend, or
contrive on the voyage, that Leonisa should fall sick, and throw the
newly-purchased Christian woman into the sea by night, with all possible
secrecy, giving out that the person who had died was Leonisa, the
sultan's slave. All this might be done in such a manner that the truth
should never be known, and the cadi would remain blameless in the
sultan's eyes, and have the full enjoyment o