CHAPTER XLII.
TWO CHARMING EYES.
If Hussein imagined that Callum Dhu and I were to watch his premises, and to guard the bower of his lady-love, even in the slender way that he watched those of the Cole-agassi Mohammed Saïd, he was very much mistaken; for, beyond an extra injunction to the sentinel at the gate to admit no man into the little fortress without my express permission I troubled myself no more about the matter; but this order would have proved no bar to an enterprising Turkish lover, or an intriguing Turkish wife, as the apartments of the Yuze Bashi had windows and a private door, which opened into a beautiful rose-garden without the walls; and the stockades, which once formed a barrier in that direction had all been sold long since by the avaricious Hussein for firewood.
The evening of the day after his departure was drawing near when I bethought me of my Unknown Beauty at the Ruined Hermitage, and before bending my steps in that direction, I lingered on the beach for a time, below the castle-wall, in the hope that she might pass that way.
The town was hidden by the weather-beaten masses of the old castle, the round towers of which had for ages formed a landmark to the sea. Reddened under the western sun, the ocean seemed on fire towards its verge, and the clouds were piled over each other, like mountains of burnished brass, or gold and flame, but ever crumbling, changing, and forming anew, as they rolled along the horizon, in all the splendour of an oriental sunset. A gorgeous orange tint was spreading over everything; the distant capes and headlands, isles, and rocks, were all tinged with amber and violet hue or fiery red; and mirrored in that shining sea which blended into yellow and crimson as its waves rolled away towards the marble island of Marmora.
Among the rocks on which this strong old castle of the Grecians stood, the dwarf oak, the flowering arbutus, the broad-leaved bay, the fragrant myrtle, the spini Christi of the gallant Crusaders, the fig, the olive, the golden orange, and the luscious pomegranate, with its brown and husky bulbs, were all growing in luxuriance; while over all some giant plane-trees—which, by a marvel, had escaped the cupidity of Hussein, though their stems were seven feet thick—spread their shady branches. The castled promontory was a place of groves, of flowers, and of perfume.
Lingering there, and thinking, almost with a sigh, that such a land was worthy of a better race, there fell something at my feet.
It was three rose-buds—the faded three I had given to my veiled fair one a few nights ago! I started and looked up, just as the white hand that had dropped them was withdrawn from a casement in the old castle-wall close by, and not ten feet from where I was sitting, and where I had been musing for an hour past with Strabo and Herodotus and their old memories, conflicting in my mind, with the recollection of her magnificent eyes, when I found them beaming upon me!
She was still muffled in her yashmack and feradjee, yet I knew her in a moment.
'Iola!' I exclaimed; 'you here?'