r, and,
giving me her hand With the best grace in the world; You Christian
ladies (said she, with a smile that made her as beautiful as an
angel) have the reputation of inconstancy, and I did not expect,
whatever goodness you expressed for me at Adrianople, that I should
ever see you again. But I am now convinced that I have really the
happiness of pleasing you; and, if you knew how I speak of you
amongst our ladies, you would be assured, that you do me justice in
making me your friend. She placed me in the corner of the sofa, and
I spent the afternoon in her conversation, with the greatest pleasure
in the world.--The sultana Hafiten is, what one Would naturally
expect to find a Turkish lady, willing to oblige, but not knowing how
to go about it; and 'tis easy to see, in her manner, that she has
lived excluded from the world. But Fatima has all the politeness and
good breeding of a court, with an air that inspires, at once, respect
and tenderness; and now, that I understand her language, I find her
wit as agreeable as her beauty. She is very carious after the
manners of other countries, and has not the partiality for her own,
so common in little minds. A Greek that I carried with me, who had
never seen her before, (nor could have been admitted now, if she had
not been in my train,) shewed that surprise at her beauty and
manners, which is unavoidable at the first sight, and said to me in
Italian,--_This is no Turkish lady, she is certainly some
Christian_.--Fatima guessed she spoke of her, and asked what she
said. I would not have told her, thinking she would have been no
better pleased with the compliment, than one of our court beauties to
be told she had the air of a Turk; but the Greek lady told it to her;
and she smiled, saying, _It is not the first time I have heard so: my
mother was a Poloneze, taken at the siege of Caminiec; and my father
used to rally me, saying, He believed his Christian wife had found
some gallant; for that I had not the air of a Turkish girl_.--I
assured her, that if all the Turkish ladies were like her, it was
absolute necessary to confine them from public view, for the repose
of mankind; and proceeded to tell her, what a noise such a face as
hers would make in London or Paris. _I can't believe you_, replied
she agreeably; _if beauty was so much valued in your country, as you
say, they would never have suffered you to leave it_.--Perhaps, dear
sister, you laugh at my vanity in repeatin