But the young bridegroom was not long suffered to be deluded by so flattering a deceit, for the reply of the Princess to his protestations was too direct and convincing, to admit of his indulging the faintest doubt of his misfortune. Around her neck she wore a slight chain, wrought in dark silk, similar to those to which the Turkish ladies commonly attach an amulet; and for all answer she withdrew this chain, and revealed to the heart-stricken Pasha the portrait of her first suitor. “It was the Sultan’s gift;” she said firmly, “I was told that he was to be my husband, and they taught me to love him—I loved him ere I knew that such a being as Saïd Pasha lived—I shall love him so long as this heart has power to beat against his likeness. I will not deceive you; I can look on you only with loathing: my fate is sealed; I shall soon lie in the tomb of my fathers. Inshallàh—I trust in God—life is not eternal, and the broken heart ceases at last to suffer.” Saïd Pasha had triumphed: he had won an Imperial bride; but he was a blighted man. He had seen Mustapha Pasha ride in the marriage train which did honour to his own nuptials; but a few hours only had elapsed ere he envied his discomfited rival the comparative happiness of freedom. That rival was, however, far from being reconciled to his fate, irrevocable as it was. He forgot that he had lost a proud bride in the memory of her youth, her beauty, and her affection. He lingered near her regal dwelling at midnight to catch the reflection of a taper through the lattices of one of its many windows, trusting that he might chance to look upon the light which beamed on her. His marriage gift was the most costly of all that glittered in her _trousseau_—and he saw the different Pashas who had been called to court to swell the pageant, depart to their provinces, without possessing the courage to follow their example. Many wondered why Mustapha Pasha, who was supreme at Adrianople, remained in comparative subserviency at Stamboul; and all whispered mysteriously of the change which had come over his nature. He was still urbane and courteous, with a gracious word and a ready smile for all; but the words came less freely, and the smiles were fainter, and even wore at times a tinge of bitterness. It was about three weeks subsequent to the Imperial marriage that an Armenian jeweller completed one of the most costly brilliant ornaments which had ever been seen, even in the Bezenstein of Constantinople. A mass of immense diamonds were clustered together in its centre in the form of a taper, at whose extremity a flame was burning brightly; and this device was surrounded by a wreath of ivy leaves, amid which a moth was nestled, mounted upon an elastic spring, that at the slightest motion threw the insect upon the flame.