ough they tried to
soften it, it struck terribly a maiden who loved so deeply.
Nevertheless, contrary to their expectation, she appeared tranquil;
she neither wept nor complained, but she smiled no more, and uttered
not a word. Her mother spoke to her; she heard her not. A spark from
her father's pipe burned her dress; she saw it not. The cold wind
blew upon her bosom; she felt it not. All her feelings seemed to
retire into her heart to torture her; but that heart was hidden from
the view, and nothing was reflected in her proud features. The
Khan's daughter was struggling with the girl: it was easy to see
which would yield first.

But this secret struggle seemed to choke Seltanetta: she longed to
fly from the sight of man, and give the reins to her sorrow.
"O heaven!" she thought; "having lost him, may I not weep for him?
All gaze on me, to mock me and watch my every tear, to make sport
for their malignant tongues. The sorrows of others amuse them, Sekina,"
she added, to her maid; "let us go and walk on the bank of the Ouzen."

At the distance of three _agatcha_ [20] from Khounzakh, towards the
west, are the ruins of an ancient Christian monastery, a lonely
monument of the forgotten faith of the aborigines.

[Footnote 20: "Agatcha," seven versts, a measure for riding--for the
pedestrian, the agatcha is four versts.]

The hand of time, as if in veneration, has not touched the church
itself, and even the fanaticism of the people has spared the
sanctuary of their ancestors. It stood entire amid the ruined cells
and falling wall. The dome, with its high pointed roof of stone, was
already darkened by the breath of ages: ivy covered with its tendrils
the narrow windows, and trees were growing in the crevices of the
stones. Within, soft moss spread its verdant carpet, and in the
sultriness a moist freshness breathed there, nourished by a fountain,
which, having pierced the wall, fell tinkling behind the stone altar,
and, dividing into silver ever-murmuring threads of pure water,
filtered among the pavement stones, and crept meandering away. A
solitary ray slanting through the window, flitted over the trembling
verdure, and smiled on the gloomy wall, like a child on its
grandame's knee. Thither Seltanetta directed her steps: there she
rested from the looks which so tormented her: all around was so still,
so soft, so happy; and all augmented but the more her sadness: the
light trembling on the wall, the twittering of the sw