la experienced, in
return for all this kindness, the warmest sentiments of gratitude,
and this she showed in the expression of her dark, dreamy eyes, at
all times; and to speak truly, the Sultan felt himself amply repaid
by her gentle gratitude and tender smiles.

In the mean time, as days and weeks passed on, silently registering
the course of life, the chill of homesickness, which had been so
keen and saddening at first, wore gradually away from the radiant
face of the slave, though she thought no less earnestly and dearly
of her friends and her home, far away in the Circassian hills; yet
absence and time had robbed her grief of its keenness, while the
easy and luxuriant mode of living that she enjoyed had again
restored the roundness of her beautiful form, had once more imparted
the rose to her check, and the elasticity of her childhood's day to
her movements. In short, she who was so lovely when she entered the
harem, had now grown so much more so, that the companions who
surrounded her, with sentiments almost akin to awe, declared her too
beautiful to live, and sagely hinting that ere long she would hear
the songs of those spirits who chant around Allah's throne.

All this had wrought a corresponding change in the heart of the
Sultan; indeed his affection and, interest for Lalla had even more
than kept pace with this improvement in her appearance; and now it
was for the first time since she came there, that those scarcely
less beautiful Georgians, the petted favorites, heretofore, of the
monarch, now evinced feelings of envy that it was impossible to
disguise. They saw but too plainly that the Sultan cared only for
the dumb slave, had smiles for no one else, and that he was ever by
her side when within the precincts of the harem.

Nor is it to be wondered at that they should feel thus. In a country
where personal beauty constitutes the marketable value of a woman,
it was but natural, that they should be led to prize this endowment,
and perhaps also in the end to dislike all who should successfully
contest the palm with them in this respect. Still, so sweet was
Lalla's disposition, so yielding and considerate, that they could
not openly express the feelings that brooded in their breasts; nor
had one unkind word yet been expressed towards her, since the first
hour that she had entered the Sultan's household.

Leaving the dumb slave thus bound by silken cords, thus chained in a
gilded cage, we will once more turn