She had all that combination of spiritual and voluptuous loveliness which her Grecian sires of old worshipped in the olive-groves of Paphos, and in the temples of Cyprus and Cytheria, when the power of Juno's rival was supreme.
I drew her gently towards me, but still she averted her timid and downcast face.
'Iola—why this change?' I asked, in a pettish tone; 'have you ceased to love me now?'
'I have not ceased to love you,' she answered, while trembling painfully; 'at first you merely struck my fancy, when passing daily in the castle-yard, where you seemed so different in air, so free in step and bearing, from the slow, heavy-headed, and crook-legged soldiers of Hussein; but now you—you—'
'What?'
'Have keenly touched my heart. Alas!' she continued, weeping; 'now I am more a slave than ever the piastres of Hussein, or the promise I gave him, before the Kadi, made me!'
'Be wary, Iola—remember that your servants may hear us, and our position is full of danger.'
'There is no danger,' she replied, bitterly; 'they are all dumb—voiceless as marble statues.'
'Dumb?'
'Mutes—tongueless—and two are deaf, or rendered so.'