Page:A Scene in the Life of Nourmehal.pdf/5

234 father's palace. My soul at once knew its predestined idol. With what delicious fear did I bind the yellow champac in my hair, when I met him secretly in the cedar grove! Oh, my father, was it not cruel to wed me with another? But even that hated link is broken! and how—" her face grew deadly pale, and the white brow glistened with the damps that rose upon it. The darkness seemed fearful; and, rubbing two pieces of sandal wood together, she hastily lighted a small lamp on a table near. The startled terror of remorse that dares not think of what it fears, is as inconsistent as all other human feelings. The attention of Shire Afkun's lovely widow was caught by a mirror on the table. She took it up and gazed on the face it reflected, earnestly, coldly,—rather as woman gazes on the features of her rival than her own. "I am beautiful," said she, slowly; "and yet that beauty, which is triumph to another, is to me mortification. He saw me, I know, when I was first brought here, prisoner, slave, in that harem where he once asked me to be queen. Can loveliness lose its power? Ah, yes! when love can lose its truth. Weak and impetuous, yielding to temptation, but trembling to enjoy the reward of the committed crime; such is the man of whom my heart made its divinity,—for whose sake I would have toiled as a slave; ay, and do; but with far other aim now. Let us but once meet again, Jehanghire, and thou