r partial intercourse had been suspended
since the Bey had discovered his daughter talking to some one, and
he had forbidden her to ever enter the apartment again that overhung
the water.

Thus confined and crossed in her feelings, Zillah grew sick, and
paler and paler each day, until the old Bey, now thoroughly aroused,
was extremely anxious lest she should be taken to the Prophet's
house. The best sages and doctors to be found were summoned, and
constantly attended the drooping flower, but alas! to no effect.
Their art was not cunning enough to discover the true cause of her
malady, and they could only shake their heads, and strike their
beards ominously to the inquiries of the anxious old Bey, her
father.

The cold-hearted Bey never dreamed of the real cause of her illness.
True, he had suspected her of being too unguarded in her habits,
and had laid restrictions upon her liberty, but as to disappointment
in love being the cause of her malady, indeed it did not seem to his
heartless disposition that love could produce such a result. She was
perhaps the only being in the world who had ever caused him to
realize that he had a heart. After thinking long and much upon the
illness of his child, he resolved to seek her confidence, and
turning his steps toward the harem, he found his drooping and fading
flower reclining upon a velvet couch. Seating himself by her side,
he parted the hair from her fair, young brow, and told his child how
dearly he loved her, and if aught weighed upon her mind he besought
her to open her lips and speak to him. Zillah loved her father,
though she was not blind to his many faults.

"Dear father, what shall I say to thee?"

"Speak thy whole heart, my child."

"Nay, but it would only displease thee, my father, for me to do so."

"Tell me, Zillah, if thou knowest what it is that sickens thee, and
robs thy cheek of its bloom?"

"Father," she answered, with a sigh, "my heart is breaking with
unhappy love."

"Love!"

"Ay, I love Selim, he who saved me from drowning in the Bosphorus."

"The Sultan's officer?"

"Yes, father, Capt. Selim."

"Why, child, that young rascal is a notorious dog of a Christian. Do
you know it?"

"I know he believes not in the faith of our fathers," she answered,
modestly.

The old Turk bit his lips with vexation, but dared not vent the
passion he felt in the delicate ear of his sick child. Indeed he had
only to look into her pale face to turn the whole cu