g showed her
to belong to the better class of her own nation, and her gentle
dignity commanded respect as well as love. She had already come to a
degree of understanding with those about her that was sufficient as
it regarded her ordinary wishes and wants, but of the past or future
she had not means to communicate, her tongue was sealed, and for
this reason her history must remain a hidden mystery to those about
her whom she loved, and would gladly have confided in.

One occupation seemed to delight her above all else, it was so
simple and beautiful, besides which it enabled her to convey her
feelings by means of an agency that, as far as it went, supplied to
her the loss of her speech. It was the arranging of flowers so as to
make them speak the language of her heart to another, a means of
communication in which the women of the East excel. Indeed it is the
only mode in which they can hold silent converse, since they know
not the cunning of the pen. Engaged in this gentle and pleasing
occupation, the Circassian passed hours and days in the study and
practice of the sweet language of flowers.

For hours together, while she was thus occupied, the idiot boy would
sit and watch her movements, and now and then receive some kindly
token of consideration from her hand that seemed to delight him
beyond measure. He followed her every movement with his eye, and
seemed only content when close by her side, sitting near her,
patient and silent; in fact he could utter but few audible sounds,
and no one had ever taught the poor idiot how to talk.

One afternoon, in the gardens that opened from the harem, the
Circassian had been engaged thus, sitting beneath the projecting
roof of a lattice-work summer house. The sun as it crept down
towards the western horizon threw lengthened shadows across the soft
green sward where minaret, cypress, or projecting angle of the
palace intervened. The boy would pick out one of those dark shadows,
and sitting down where it terminated, seem to think that he could
keep it there, but when the shadow lengthened every moment more and
more, and seemed to his untutored and simple comprehension to creep
out from under him, he would look amazed to see how it was done
while he sat upon it.

In following up a projecting shadow thus, he had come at last almost
to the very side of the dumb slave just as a gaudy winged parrot lit
upon the eve of the summer house on a large piece of the picket work
that had be