She had been born in Albania; it was the land of her love; the Buyuk Hanoum, her mother, was descended from one of the most powerful and princely families of the country; and she had been used to see her looked upon with the reverence due to her birth and rank; she remembered that the Pasha, her father, had dared, in his pride of place, to measure strength with the Sultan, his master, and to defy his power—he had failed, but the haughty effort had been made; and the fair Heyminè looked back with sadness and regret to the days of past splendour and warrior strife amid which she had grown to womanhood. She clung to her mother with the loving gentleness that spoke in her deep eyes: but she worshipped her father, as something more than mortal; and her fair cheek flushed crimson, and her proud lip dilated into smiles, as she spoke of him. And how she had garnered up within her heart those sweet, sad, memories which mock the brightness of the present! How she dwelt upon the country she had loved and lost, and amid whose mountains she had breathed the breath of freedom! I never saw the enthusiasm of the spirit more legibly written upon the brow of any human being than on her’s. It redeemed the apathy of a score of Eastern women! The Buyuk Hanoum was as far from being reconciled to the change of country and position as her daughter; but her sadness was more subdued by resignation—she had reached the age when reverses are less keenly felt—a calm sorrow sat upon her brow, and breathed in her low, tremulous, tone; but the blood which leaped to the brow of the daughter in warmer gushes as she spoke of the past only curdled more chillingly about the heart of the mother when the same visions arose in vain mockery before her, to remind her of what had once been, and could never be again! Scodra Pasha had earned for himself a place on the page of history, but he had paid a high and a painful price for the privilege. He had tasted for a brief space the intoxicating draught of power, but the bowl had been dashed from his lips. He had defied the yoke beneath which he had been ultimately bowed, and the iron that has been resisted is ever that which eats deepest into the soul. It must be a severe trial to sink from a leader to a vassal; even when it is from a rebel chief to the dependent Pasha of a Sultan. Mustapha Pasha had been almost a sovereign in Albania, a brave soldier, and a powerful prince; and, when he accepted the conditions of his Imperial Master, and bought his life at the price of his country and his fortune, the struggle of the spirit must have been a bitter one.