aces to sit in, during the sultry
part of the day; or she would stop her pony over a precipice to gather
some curious flowers, drooping from a natural arch; or to pluck the
pendant and waving boughs of the most graceful of Indian tress, the
imperial mimosa, sensitive and sacred as love, shrinking from the
touch of the profane.

"'Put this,' she said, holding out a branch, 'in your turban; for I am
sure in some of these hollow caves and dreary chasms the ogres live;
they feed their young with human blood, and they love to give them the
young and beautiful. Put it in your turban, brother,--since you say I
must not call you master;--and never frown,--I do not like to see it,
for then you are not so handsome,--I mean, good, as when you smile.
Do not laugh, but take it. It will preserve you from every spell and
magic. Nothing bad dares come near it.'

"While crossing a sandy level, suddenly she started, as her eye caught
some object. Without stopping her horse, which was ambling along, she
sprang off, and ran up a sand hill, like a white doe. Never having
witnessed any thing like this before, I was so astonished that she was
returning, ere I could overtake her to ask if an ogre had lured her with
his evil eye. 'O, no,' she cried,--'look here! You like flowers, but did
you ever see any so lovely as this?--Smell it,--'tis so sweet, that the
rose, if growing near it, loses its beauty and fragrance, from envy of
its rival.'

"Certainly I thought she was bewitched. It was a glaring, large, red
bough, full of blowzy blossoms, and yellow berries, with a musky, foeted
odour. 'Why,' I exclaimed, 'you have as much reason to be jealous of old
Kamalia, your nurse, as the rose to be jealous of such a scraggy bramble
as this! Faugh! the smell makes me sick.'

"I suppose I was instigated to make this rude speech by her fondling
and kissing it. Her dark eyes expanded; and she seemed, for an instant,
to view me with astonishment, then with sorrow; as they closed, I
perceived that their brightness was gone, and the long, jetty fringe,
which arched upwards as it pressed her cheek, was covered with little
pearly dew-drops. The branch fell from her hand under my feet, her
sprightly form drooped, and the tones of her voice reminded me of the
time when she hung over her dying parent, as she said,--'pardon me,
stranger! I had forgotten you are not of my father's land. This tree
covered my father's tent, sheltered us from the sun, and kept away