Too wise openly to offend the prejudices of his people—and nothing would have done so, more decidedly or more dangerously than any infringement of the sanctity of the harem—he had not dared, absolute as he was, to grant to his daughter that full liberty founded upon the fullness of trust which he had learned to admire in Venice. Still he had done all that he could do without offending prejudices or awakening angry opposition. He had made Ayesha, from her earliest years, the companion of his leisure hours; he had educated her in all that he himself knew, he had consulted her as a friend, he had confided in her as a human soul, not treated her as the mere pet and plaything of an hour. And now as she grew up from an engaging child to a fair marriageable maiden, accomplished, intellectual, thoughtful, not an irresponsible being, but a responsible human creature, with the beauty, the impulsive nature, the passionate heart of the Moorish girl, but with the reason, the intellect, the soul of the Spanish lady—Muley Abderrahman, who was waxing into years, began to doubt whether he had done wisely in training up the child of Mequiñez, the offspring of the desert, to the arts, the accomplishments, the hopes, and the aspirations of the free Venetian _dama_—began to look around him anxiously to see where he might bestow the hand of her whom he had learned to cherish and esteem even above his people or his power. He saw none, on that side of the Mediterranean, with whom she could be other than a slave—the first and mistress of the slaves, indeed, but still one of them—a beautiful toy to be prized for beauty, while that beauty should yet endure; if faded, to be cast aside into the sad solitude of neglect for a newer plaything, perhaps to be imprisoned—as a discrowned and discontented queen, and therefore dangerous—in some distant and dim seraglio on the verge of the great burning desert. And was this a fate for the bright, the beloved, the beautiful, the sage Ayesha?