Mariaritza was an Athenian; proud of her unsullied descent, and of the loved land of her birth. She was on a visit to a rich relative at Constantinople; but she sighed for Greece as the captive sighs for liberty; and the rather that a wealthy suitor had presented himself, whom her friends persecuted her to receive.
“Did they know what is hidden here!” she exclaimed, as she alluded to this new lover, pressing her small hand over her heart while she spoke; “Could they guess the tale which I have confided to no ear save your’s—But you are weeping—your tears are bright in the moonlight—God forgive me! but I did not think that you knew how to weep.”
“Mariaritza!” I whispered reproachfully.
“Pardon! pardon!” murmured the wayward girl, winding her arm about my neck; “Our Lady have mercy on me! It is my fate ever to pain those I love. But I will talk of myself no more—Let us speak of Greece—my own beautiful Greece!—or, listen—I will sing to you a song that I ought long to have forgotten, for he wrote it—Did I tell you that he, too, was an Athenian?”
And without waiting for a reply, she warbled to a plaintive melody some Greek stanzas, of which the following is a free translation:
THE GREEK GIRL’S SONG.
My own bright Greece! My sunny land!
Nurse of the brave and free!
How bound the chords beneath my hand
Whene’er I sing of thee—