Then came the bride, veiled from head to foot, a cashmere shawl over the veil concealing completely her face and figure from the envious eyes of the spectators.
It is usual for brides of rank to ride on donkeys, but on this occasion Amina was mounted on Nebleh, splendidly caparisoned by the Viceroy’s order, the beautiful Arab’s embroidered reins being held by eunuchs who walked on each side of her head. The procession was closed by a party of Mamelukes richly accoutred and a band of Turkish music.
On reaching Hassan’s house the bride and her attendants sat down to a repast prepared for them, the bridegroom being, according to etiquette, absent at the bath. After a certain time he returned with his party and a cortége scarcely less numerous than that of the bride.
On entering the house he left his friends to refresh themselves below, while he went to an upper apartment where Amina was seated, still completely veiled, between Zeinab Khanum and one of Delì Pasha’s wives.
Agreeably to custom, Hassan went through the form of giving to each a piece of money, called the “unveiling fee” (for up to that moment the bridegroom is supposed not to have seen the face of the bride); the two elder ladies retired, and Hassan was left alone with Amina. According to the prescribed rules of their faith, he gently lifted the veil from her face, saying as he did so, “In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful.”
But not strange to each other were those eyes that now exchanged their glances of unutterable love. Not the blush of a timid virgin on first seeing the stranger who is hereafter to be her tyrant was the rosy hue that tinged the neck of Amina as she listened in breathless silence to the prayer which, according to Mohammedan rite, he uttered before he ventured to embrace his wedded bride. Placing his right hand on her head, he said with a deep-toned earnestness which thrilled to her heart—
“Oh, Allah, bless me in my wife, and bless my wife in me. Unite us, as thou hast united us, for our good, and separate us when thou hast decreed to do so, likewise for our good.”
Here let us take the veil which Hassan had removed from Amina’s head and hang it over the portal of the room where their love is crowned with that “sober certainty of waking bliss,” which heretofore they had only seen in the visions of hope and in the land of dreams.
THE END.