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the monotony of her thoughts in the lazy and uneventful harem life, day by day, and year after year her dream of love grew on.

Once, when she was about fifteen, as she stood leaning against a terrace in the garden, her oval face turned towards the distant hills, her dark dreamy eyes gazing far onward, her skin of velvety whiteness, save when as now a soft colour rising, and a half smile on the lips, showed the presence of some happy day-dream of her lord, some of the attendants noticing her, stood gazing in admiration at her lovely beauty, and said to each other whisperingly, " It is nearly time she be presented to the king." And then it happened some days later, as Maliba went into a room, she saw lying on the ground a dagger of exquisite workmanship, and set with precious stones. "What is that?" she asked one of the women there. "A dagger the king left here as he passed this way." Maliba stood motionless for a while, the colour flew to her cheeks, then seizing it, she kissed it and darted off with it to her room; it was the first personal possession of her lord's she had ever yet seen. The women in the room noticed all this and some smiled, and one said, "She is no longer a child, it is time she be presented to her lord, Abdallah must be told of this." So the King of Granada was reminded of the little Christian prisoner captured ten years before, during a foray into Christian territory, and grown now into such a lovely and graceful girl as to be fitted in every way to become his queen. He was told too of the little history of the dagger, and it pleased him, his imagination was aroused, this girl's love was very different from any he had met before in his own land, and he said to himself, "I will not have her brought to me as my prisoner, my subject, I will make love to her after the manner of the Spaniards with their ladies;" so he gave orders that a little before sunset she should be taken to a certain garden near the palace, and there he would meet her.

The spot was well chosen for a love scene, the garden was laid out in the stiff Moorish style, but so artistic was the design chosen, so exquisitely were bright colours blended, and so well had all plants and trees grown, that men forgot everything there grew to order, and was trimmed to a certain form, cut to a certain height. There were fountains all round, and in the centre of the garden a long and rather narrow pond full of gold fishes, with a wall of flowers all round, Every path in the garden

and arches of yew tree standing over it. was lined with narrow streams of running water; at the further end of the garden were steps with a balustrade on either side, on the top of

which tiny streams again poured down; the steps led to a marble gallery with Moorish arches and clusters of slender columns, this gallery reached across the breadth of the garden, and was built at the extreme edge of the hill; leaning over the marble wall one could see a straight mass of brickwork and stone reaching down for about forty feet, then a slightly slanting ground covered with brushwood and big stones reaching far down to the river, and beyond there was a lovely view of the Vega.

Here Abdallah awaited Maliba, remembering with a gratified smile the fate of his dagger, and thinking how he would tell her he wanted to make prisoner a certain little thief, wondering whether she would prove as lovely as had been described to him, and planning little speeches.

Meanwhile Maliba had been told of the crisis in her life which was approaching, and with beating heart and an overwhelming sense of happiness, was hurrying with eager steps, outstripping her attendants to the place appointed; she was not planning speeches, or thinking what words to say to him. To her, it would be the greatest happiness she had yet known, to be able to say to the lord of her life, "I love thee,” and in and with those words, make over to him as his own for ever her past life! and then, who requires to hear more than "I love thee" from the lips of the best loved one on earth? At the entrance of the garden the attendants left her, first however signing to her to go towards the gallery. By the clear waters and bright flowers she passed on with such light footfall, that Abdallah was unconscious of her approach, eagerly seeking him till, arrived at the foot of the steps, looking up she saw, leaning against the white marble with the bright afternoon sun shining full on him, the blue-eyed lord of her dreams, and standing motionless there with clasped hands, gazed at him with a sort of shy He turned, and seeing her, went towards her quickly, but as he approached her he went more slowly, at the steps he stopped; it was not that her beauty surprised him, here were perfect form, and feature, and colouring, but beyond this there was visible on each line of her face, the impress of a beautiful soul, which will make even a plain face more beautiful than a perfectly formed one, and a feeling of awe, of reverence such as he had never yet felt in the presence of woman, stole over him as he stood before her. He took her hand in his and bent low over it, then as he looked up into that face so close to his, with the innocence of childhood so clearly expressed, and yet in those eyes, the

awe.

deep love of womanhood, he forgot his speeches and plans, and the meeting he had arranged, for there suddenly welled up in his heart as a fountain that passionate love of the South which is often sudden, .often entirely absorbing and sometimes stronger than death, and his words were incoherent and disconnected, and he told his love he knew not how! and after a while, still filled with a sense of the exquisite happiness of that first meeting, he led her through the garden, and covered her with flowers; tearing down red and white roses from the trees, he dropped them over her, saying, "This is my love I give thee, fed by my heart's life blood, and this is thine for me, pure as the snow of the Sierra," and he gave her yew, "this is the endurance of my love for thee, ever green, ever lasting;" and as he saw the clear water freshening all the garden, he said, so is thy love to me, refreshment and renewed life amidst my labours and disappointments;" and then he took her to the gallery, and looking down on the lovely landscape, a sudden sadness such as often comes after a great joy, fell on him as his eyes rested for a moment on a dark rock far away at the edge of the Sierra; he told Maliba to look at it; with an effort, she turned away her eyes from him to look at the, to her, uninteresting rock, it was the nearest approach to pain she had ever yet felt, and then having thus obeyed him, let her eyes return quickly to their former silent worship.

"That rock is called the 'lovers' rock,' and there is a sad ballad that the people sing about it; why I should remember it just now I know not, save, that while waiting for thee here, the dark rock at the edge of the Sierra by the sunny landscape caught my attention, but it is a history of a true and strong love; shall I sing it to thee, darling?" and reading assent in her eyes, he played some chords on a sort of guitar, and sang to her of the Moorish Knight who fell in love with a Christian maid, and at night would ride to her father's castle and talk to her at her window. But their relations discovered their love, and were very angry, because he was a Moslem, and she a Christian, and forbade their seeing one another; this was unendurable, so with the courage and perseverance of love, they planned an escape, and ran away together one night. As their horses galloped off they could hear their enemies following them, they urged the animals on faster and faster, but vain were spur and blow that night, their enemies gained on them, and the lovers, not noticing in the dark and excitement where they were going, found themselves near the edge of a steep rock; turning, they saw their

pursuers close at hand, and knew that escape was impossible, and that capture meant separation for life, then clinging to one another, looking into one another's eyes, they knew that life apart would be death, but to die together, that would be life, and so, in a despairing madness of love, they threw themselves down from the rock.

Maliba did not understand the ballad as we should understand it. Moslem and Christian were all one to her, and of suffering and death, except under the form of a crushed insect or a dead bird, she also knew nothing; but yet the passionate sadness of the story, the melancholy rhythm, and modulations from one minor key to another of the tune to which Abdallah sang the words, and the pathetic earnestness which he put into his song, filled her soul with a sadness she had never before felt, and tears fell from her eyes as he ended.

“Darling, I have made thee sad with this melancholy tale; I know not why at such a happy moment of my life I should sing it, unless it were that as I thought over the story before thou camest here, I wondered what that love could be that made them do such wild things, but now that I have known thee, Maliba, I understand it! and so this story is the song of my love for thee."

And she looking at him, said, "Ah, my love," but in tones so sweet, so earnest, so full of a completed joy, that he felt as though he had been listening to a most beautiful song.

Long while they remained together, and the sun was setting behind the distant mountains before messengers came from the palace requesting the Wali's presence on urgent business. With tender farewells and passionate words, reluctantly and slowly he left her, and after his departure she remained motionless where she was, fancying she still heard his loving words, till a leaf falling down from some creeper and blown by a gentle breeze past her, made her look after it. Close before her stood the huge red tower of the ambassador's hall; beneath it masses of trees, and lower still the winding river, opposite to her the dark mountains, while between them and the tower she could see the luxuriant lowland stretching far away and bathed in the rich sunset glow.

"Surely there is no place in the world so beautiful as this," she thought, and as her eyes noticed the dark rock in the distance, she said confidently," the Moslem lover of the Christian maid never loved her as my lord loves me, no, no other man in the world could love like him."

Then half turning, she saw her attendants waiting for her below, and with them she went to be dressed for the great feast that was to take place in the palace that night.

CHAPTER II.

On the borders of a lake in the south of Spain might have been seen one evening about two years after the meeting between Abdallah and Maliba, recorded in the last chapter, a troop of Moorish cavalry halting for awhile to rest their wearied horses by the lake's clear waters. They had that day made a successful inroad on Christian territory, and had captured during the foray the Condesa of Arte and her two boys, aged respectively six and five years, important prisoners, for whom they hoped to receive rich ransoms, and guarded therefore with the greatest care. But as they seemed to have well distanced their pursuers, the leader of the Moors had given orders for a long halt, so the prisoners had been made to dismount, the horses were unsaddled, discipline relaxed, and everything in disorder, when two scouts galloped to the spot to inform the officer in command that the Christians were pursuing closely. Then amidst much bustle and confusion the horses were brought back from the cool waters and saddled hastily, orders and counter orders given in all directions, Doña Dolores was hurried to her horse, and in the confusion separated from her boys. She called to them, but received no answer. She was told they were quite safe, Mustapha Hassen had charge of them, and so the whole party moved off. But both the boys were not there. The eldest had been knocked over by a horse during the excitement of the re-mount, and in trying to save himself from falling under the horse's feet had sprained his ancle and fainted from the intense pain it caused him.

He lay for some time in that state, and as the sounds made by the departing Moors gradually decreased, silence reigned once more over the lake. The Christians in pursuit must have lost the track of the departing Moors and have wandered away in a wrong direction, for nothing occurred to interrupt the silence that reigned around.

Twilight is hardly known in the south of Spain, so night soon came on. The dark shadows in the hills around looked most gloomy, but the lake lay gleaming in the moonlight, and filling itself with images of the heavens above; the trees bent their branches gracefully over the waters, their leaves floating lazily on its surface till some gentle

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