take his life without reason."

"I had reason sufficient for me."

"What was it, excellency?"

"The fellow loved you, Komel."

"O, sorrow me, sorrow me, that his love for should have been his
ending."

The struggle in the beautiful girl's bosom for a moment was fearful.
It was like the rough and sudden blast that sweeps tempest--like over
a glassy lake and turns its calm waters into trembling waves and
dark shadows. She did not give way under the fearful news that she
hear; a counter current of feeling seemed to save her, and to bring
back the color once more to her lips, and cheeks, and to add
brilliancy to the large, lustrous eyes so peculiar to her race. All
this the Sultan marked well, and indeed was at a loss rightly to
understand these demonstrations.

So quick and marked was the change that it puzzled the monarch,
though he read something still of its rightful character, for he had
known before the bitterness of a revengeful spirit, and bore upon
his breast, at that hour, the deep impression of a dagger's point,
where a Circassian slave, whom he had deprived of her child, had
attempted to stab him to the heart. And now as he looked upon Komel,
he thought he could read some such spirit in the expression of the
beautiful slave before him, and he was right! Dark thoughts seemed
to be struggling even in her gentle breast, when she realized that
Aphiz was no more, and that his murderer was before her.

Nothing in reality could be more gentle than the loving disposition
of the slave. Her natural character was all tenderness and modest
diffidence, but she had now been touched at a point where she was
most sensitive. Aphiz, without the shadow of guilt, save that he was
true in his love to her, had been murdered in cold blood, and the
announcement of the fact by the Sultan had chilled every fountain of
tenderness in her bosom. She looked wistfully at the jewelled dagger
that hung in the monarch's girdle, and fearful thoughts were
thronging her brain. The Sultan little knew on how slender thread
his life hung at that moment, for a very slight blow from his
dagger, swiftly and truly given, would have revenged Aphiz in a
moment.

"And what end do you propose to yourself that this deed has been
done?" she asked, after a few moments' pause, during which the
Sultan had regarded her most intently, and, if possible, with
increased interest, at the picture she now presented of startled and
spirited energy.

"You told