As I reached her side she looked up, and the flash of blended ire and bitterness was in those dark wild eyes, as she exclaimed, without changing her position: “Ha! Is it indeed you who are cheating yourself into a belief that you can love the silent night better than the laughter and the flatteries of yonder empty-hearted fools?” and she jerked her veiled head impatiently in the direction of the Palace: “You, the courted, and the caressed; whom they idolise and worship because you can record them and their’s, and make them subject for song and story in your own far-off land? Go, go—The night air may chill you—It is not for such as you to be abroad when the dew is on the earth.” I saw that the dark mood was on her. I had known her thus more than once; and I only answered by drawing a part of her long veil over my own head, and sitting down on the earth beside her. “Nay, if you will really forsake them awhile for _my_ companionship,” she murmured, while the moonlight that streamed upon her face was not more soft than the gaze which met mine as I looked up at her: “let us free ourselves for a while from all risk of intrusion—I have been in the lime-avenue, but I had well nigh intruded on a love-tale; and when I would fain have taken refuge in the ruined temple, and found it tenanted by a Saraf and his pipe-bearer——” “And I”—and as I spoke I raised her hand playfully to my lips; “I am to chace you hence?” “You shall, if you so will it;” said Mariaritza: “and if you will trust yourself with me for a couple of hours——” “Any where—everywhere——” The young Greek answered only by rising, and moving hastily towards the house. In a moment I heard the clapping of her small hands; and in five minutes more her caïque awaited us at the terrace-gate which opened on the channel. “The sternmost caïquejhe is deaf;” whispered Mariaritza; as we established ourselves on the yielding cushions at the bottom of the arrow-like boat, and wrapped the furred pelisses with which it was profusely supplied carefully about us—“we have but to converse in a low voice, and we shall be safe, even although we should whisper treason of Mahmoud himself!” I answered with a similar jest; and we darted out into the centre of the channel, and on until we glided beneath the Asian shore. No! I shall never forget that night—and could I impart to my readers the tale to which I listened from that passionate Greek girl, in a flood of moonlight, and to the music of the myriad nightingales, as we crept along under the shadows of the mighty hills, I might spare the asseveration. That night I heard all her secret; and from that hour I loved her! Mariaritza was an Athenian; proud of her unsullied descent, and of the loved land of her birth. She was on a visit to a rich relative at Constantinople; but she sighed for Greece as the captive sighs for liberty; and the rather that a wealthy suitor had presented himself, whom her friends persecuted her to receive.