“My girl,” said her father, as he one day embraced her with anxious tenderness, “I still hope to see my home blessed through you. You have, I trust, won a good man’s love.”
“Of whom do you speak?” asked the daughter, with a fluttering heart.
“The minister’s son.”
“He has never avowed his passion.”
“But it needs not the tongue’s avowal to confirm the evidence of a silent yet more credible expression that he loves thee. You will hear him declare himself before the horns of the next young moon meet. Tell me, Yhahil, do you love him?”
“I do, father.”
“Would you wed him?”
“I never could love the man I would not wed, nor wed whom I could not love.”
“I am satisfied.”
The parents from this time looked anxiously for the Mahomedan’s declaration, but it came not, and they began to be impatient, though it was more than ever evident that he loved their child.