Dazzled by her charms, and intoxicated by the fascination of her manner, her artless wit, and her delicate timidity, so far removed from the unbridled passion of such other eastern beauties as had visited his solitude, the Christian soldier betrayed such evident delight in listening to her soft words, and such keen anxiety for a repetition of the interview, that the oriental monarch believed that he had in sooth prevailed. Confidently, however, as he had calculated on the conversion of the believing husband by the unbelieving wife, the bare possibility of an opposite result had never once occurred to his distorted vision. But truly has it been said, “_Magna est veritas et prævalebit!_” The damsel who had been sent to create emotion in the breast of another, was the first to become its victim herself: she whose tutored tongue was to have won the prisoner from the faith of his fathers, was herself the first to fall away from the creed of her race. Enamored, beyond the reach of description, of the good knight, whose attractions of person were no less superior to the boasted beauty of the oriental nobles, than his rich and enthusiastic mind soared above their prejudiced understandings, she had surrendered her whole soul to a passion as intense as the heat of her native climate; she had lent a willing ear to the fervid eloquence of her beloved, and had drank in fresh passion from the very language which had won her reason from the debasing superstitions of Islamism to the bright and everlasting splendors of the Christian faith. From this moment the eastern maid became the bride of his affections, the solace of his weary hours, the object of his brightest hopes. He had discovered that she was worthy of his love; he was sure that her whole being was devoted to his welfare; and he struggled no longer against the spirit with which he had battled, as unworthy his country, his name, and his religion. It was not long ere the converted maiden had planned the escape, and actually effected the deliverance, of her affianced lover. She had sworn to join him in his flight; she had promised to accompany him to his distant country, and to be the star of his ascendant destinies, as she had been the sole illuminator to his hours of desolation and despair.