"Thou art a fair blossom. May God love thee! May the holy saints keep thee! May thy mother watch thee, my child!" murmured the Khan, as he bent over his sleeping daughter. "Even such was thy mother in those first days, as guileless and as beautiful. Nay, thou art but the copy, Zyna. And had she but lived to see thee and thy brother as ye are it would have been well. Yet why not well as it is?" he resumed after a pause; "surely Fate is good whatever it be. If my heart warns me of coming ill--nay, if he too be gone from me, well; he is with her, and the old man will soon follow, and there will be peace, peace, peace! Yet I would live still a little for thee, my child--only for thee! else the first shot or keen sword-cut were welcome to Afzool Khan." So he thought and watched, and at times gently fanned his child with the papers in his hand that her sleep might be the lighter, and again resumed his occupation of reading. All was silent, but the night wind sighed mournfully through the open trelliswork of the window, and seemed rising; and as he listened, there were mutterings of a coming storm. Opening one of the small casements, he looked out. The city was dark beneath him, and still; even the dogs seemed to have gone to sleep. Far distant, the wailing howls of a pack of jackals came upon his ear fitfully, and again ceased as the sound was blown away by the wind. Over the face of the sky the wild dark clouds were now hurrying ragidly along, disclosing here and there a star, which was again as instantly hidden. In the west, the horizon was black and threatening, and the edges of a heavy bank of cloud, now fast rising, pile over pile, were illumined like burnished silver, as lightning flashed rapidly through them, lighting up the city, and the bold domes and tall minarets of the mosques and mausoleums, with a sickly glare for an instant, to disappear as rapidly as a thought. One of the night-storms of the season was evidently approaching, and the cool fresh wind was grateful to the Khan, as he leaned forth and looked into the void of darkness abstractedly.