Once or twice a fear that I might have been lured here for some deadly purpose, and that her rendezvous was but a wicked snare, flashed upon me.
The scene was beautiful. On one hand lay the cemetery with its grove of tall and solemn cypresses; on the other rose a marble rock surrounded by an old rampart, having ruined towers, from which the cannon of the Greeks had poured their stone-shot upon the fierce Timariots of the Sultan Mohammed the Second, the founder of the new Empire. Amid these old ramparts the antique outline of a gilt dome and the white minar of a little mosque cut the evening sky. At the base of the rock a stream flowed from a ruined arch into a marble basin, over which flourished the beautiful leaves of the acanthus, under the shade of the graceful and delicate olive-tree.
The sun was setting with gorgeous brilliance; the western sky was all a lurid red, as if the whole horizon was in flames, and the shadows of three gigantic Grecian Doric columns of white marble—ascribed to the Genii in the times of old—were thrown far across the landscape. From the shattered cornice and four triglyphs which still surmounted them, some long and pendant creeping plants swung like garlands on the evening wind, that came from the deep and blue Propontis.
The shadows began to deepen; the horizon paled. The birds had ceased to sing; but the little snakes were hissing vigorously under the broad leaves of the acanthus and the dewy lentisuculus—for in ten minutes night would be on.
There was a sound; and my unknown, in her white yashmack and flowing robes, came before me like a graceful spirit, and quite as suddenly. Her hands were placed joyously and confidingly in mine, and her eyes—the loveliest of all those dark and soul-lit oriental eyes that seem to swim in their own lustrous glory—were beaming upon me. I was bewildered—confused—dazzled!
I felt the impossibility of resisting the fascinations of two such loving eyes. The inside of the delicate lids were blackened with kohol, and the ends of her slender fingers were tinged with rosyhenna—yet she spoke with somewhat of a Greek accent.
'Tell me your name, my beautiful one?' I whispered, retaining her soft hands in mine.
'Iola,' was the half-breathed reply.
'Iola—anything more?'
'Mashallah! what more would you require me to say?'