"Why should I? Because our poets regularly conclude their love-romances in which a Turk falls in love with a Christian girl, by bringing him to baptism and dressing him in a mente instead of a kaftan? Here, however, you have one of those romances of real life, in which a woman follows her spouse and sacrifices everything for him." "No doubt you are right, Catharine; but you must let me get used to the idea that a Christian, let alone an Hungarian, girl may wed a Turk." "And listen, dear Lady Beldi: surely God would have imputed less merit to me, if I had converted my husband to our faith, instead of leaving him in the faith wherein he was born? As a Christian renegade he would have occupied but a humble place in our little church; while as one of the most influential of the Pashas, he has made the fate of all the Christians in Turkey so tolerable, that the Christian subjects of other states flock over to us as to a land of promise. Often, when he has received his share of the spoils of battle, he has handed me a long list with the names of those of my enslaved countrymen whom he has ransomed at a great price. He has expended immense treasures in this way. And believe me, love, the perusal of such a list gives me more pleasure than the sight of the most beautiful oriental pearls which my husband might easily have purchased with the amount, and it has raised him higher in my estimation than if he had learnt the whole Psalter by heart. And he is not the man to break the word he has once given, whether it be to God or to his fellow-man. If he were capable of abjuring his religion, I could believe no longer in his love, for then he would cease to be him whom I have always known; he would cease to be the man who, when once he has said a thing, always abides by it, never goes back from, and is to be moved neither by the terrors of death nor the tears of a woman." Lady Beldi embraced her friend, and kissed her glowing cheeks. "You are right, my good Catharine! 'Tis our prejudices that prevent us from rising higher than everyday thoughts. It is true. Love also has her faith, her religion. But how about your country? Have you never thought of that?" Catharine rose with proud self-satisfaction from her seat, and pressed her friend's hand. "Let this convince you that I indeed love my country. I am about to sacrifice for it the lives of my husband and my son, whom perhaps I now behold for the last time." Lady Beldi's face plainly showed that she did not quite grasp the meaning of these words, and Catharine was about to explain them to her, when a servant announced that the gentlemen had long been awaiting them in the dining-room. Lady Beldi thereupon gave her arm to her friend and led her into the dining-room. The children had already become such close friends that Aranka allowed Feriz Beg to carry her in to dinner, playing all the time with childish coquetry with the diamond clasp of his agraffe.