“Father, I will obey you in everything. My life is in your hands. But if you do not wish to break my heart and send me to an early grave, save me from this marriage. I do not wish to leave you, father. At least give me a year’s or six months’ delay.”
Delì Pasha could not resist the pleading grief of his beloved child. Secretly unwilling himself to part from her, he consented to the delay for which she so earnestly entreated.
“Be comforted, light of my eyes,” he said; “it is only your welfare and happiness that I wish. Dry up your tears and let me see you smile again. I have not passed my word to Hashem Bey. I will write to him that I wish you to go with me to Siout, and that the time for betrothal is not now opportune. That if after six months he desires to renew the subject, it can be then taken into consideration. Will that satisfy you, Amina?”
Amina did look up, and though her eyes were still bedewed with tears, rays of hope and joy and gratitude shone through them like sunbeams through an April shower. Covering his hands with her kisses, she exclaimed, “Oh, father, you have given me a second life—you are always too good, too kind to your Amina.”
What bright hopes, what sunny visions had the young girl’s sanguine imagination conceived and crowded into the space of six months! Selim would be gone to Turkey or the other world, Hassan would be a bey or pasha!
“My child, it is time for you to go to rest,” said Delì Pasha. “Allah bless you! may your night be happy, and to-morrow let me see my Morning Star shine as brightly as ever.” With an affectionate kiss on her forehead he went across to his own apartments.
Delì Pasha was neither a suspicious nor a reflecting man, but he had a fair share of good sense when he chose to exert it, and the more he mused on the events of the day the more did he feel puzzled and unable to explain them: the strange emotion and agitation of Fatimeh Khanum, usually so staid and tranquil in her bearing, the still more violent emotion and agitation of his daughter on receiving proposals of marriage from a suitor altogether unexceptionable, and whose name he imagined must be unknown to her. “Surely,” he said to himself, “these women must have heard some story against Selim, that he is hateful, or cruel, or brutal. I must inquire of Fatimeh Khanum and find this out.”
While he was indulging in these meditations Amina had locked herself into her boudoir, and having loosened the bands that confined her hair, left it to fall all over her lovely neck and shoulders; then, drawing forth her small praying-carpet, she went through her accustomed prayers, bowing her fair forehead upon it, and thanking Allah for having preserved her from a danger the recollection of which still made her shudder.
She went to the lattice and gently, very gently, opened the side of it. She could see nothing, for the moon was not up, neither could she be seen, though Hassan was watching like a true sentinel of love: the creaking of the half-opened lattice did not, however, escape his quick ear, and ere she retired from it she heard in a half-whispered tone, that seemed to hover in the air, the following verses:—
“Extolled be the Lord who hath endued with all beauty she who hath enslaved my heart.