on, came with a hope, that I too may
not rest altogether unremembered.

"How can I fail," I replied, "to love one who has not only affectionate
tenderness of heart, but surpassing beauty of form? God has denied you
nothing."

"Oh! sir, do not say so," she exclaimed. "Heaven has been good to me;
but I am also afflicted. My father sleeps in a distant land, and my poor
mother here; and, look, how young I am to be alone."

The tears followed each other down her face, and the intensity of her
grief was too great to allow Gunilda, for some moments, to speak.
Looking up into my face, her eyes still filled with tears, she said,

"My condition is one of extreme sorrow and loneliness; and if you could
hear it all, you would confess that I have cause to weep as well as
others. But think me not ungrateful."

"One whose heart is so guileless can never know ingratitude," I replied.
"But may I know your sorrows?"

"Would you like to hear them, sir?"

"I would."

"As I told you, then, sir," Gunilda said, rising from her kneeling
attitude, and sitting at my feet on the ground, "my father was a sailor.
His heart was as affectionate as his form was manly; and his was a
nature not long to roam the world without the sigh of sympathy. In the
summer of 1832, my father's vessel sailed from Christiania, bound to the
Black Sea; and he has often told me how dreary his fate felt, doomed, as
he was, to leave his country without one heart to think of him when
absent, or rejoice when he should return. After a prosperous voyage the
Mediterranean was reached, and the ship entered, with a fair wind, the
Straits of the Hellespont. On one side, sir, of the Hellespont, is a
small town called Sestos; it is a spot ignoble now, but was, once, one
of note. At Sestos a Turkish nobleman, removed by age from the cares of
State, had retired to pass in quietude the remainder of his life; and,
surrounded by his harem, desired no other felicity than the
companionship of his mistresses.

"The castle of this Turk lay by the Dardanelles, and from its windows
the clear blue waters might be seen.

"Beautiful, and having yet the innocence of youth, and brought from her
mountain home, near the Caucasus, to pant beneath the influence of a
warmer sun, a Circassian maiden pined. One day, oppressed by the heat,
the Circassian stole to a window overlooking the Straits, and strove to
catch the freshness of the wind that passed, cooled, from the surface of
the sea. Wh