“These last considerations prevailed on me to defer my application to Shunah Shoo, until the suspicions regarding my faith had either died away, or been falsified by my scrupulous observance of all religious duties.  My excellent mother, who at first had entered into my feelings and seconded my views, readily acquiesced in the good sense of my father’s advice.

“My next object was to communicate this to Veenah.  I accordingly sat down, and wrote a full account of all that had occurred, and folding up the packet, hurried to the opposite quarter of the town where Shunah Shoo lived.  It was then in the dusk of the evening, and I was fearful it was too late for me to be recognised; but after I had taken two or three turns in the street, I saw the white amaranth I had given Veenah, suspended by a thread from the lattice of an upper window.  I immediately held up the packet, and soon afterwards a cord was let down from the same lattice to the ground.  To this I hastily fastened the paper, and passed on to avoid observation.  The next evening you may be sure I was at the same spot.  The little amaranth again announced that I was recognised; and as soon as we were satisfied that no one was observing us, the cord let down one letter and took up another.  Veenah’s pen had given an expression to her feelings, that her tongue had never ventured to do before.  She moreover commended my course—­besought me to be prudent—­and above all, to do nothing to offend her father.

“The first letter which a lover receives from his mistress, is a new era in his life.  Again and again I kissed the precious paper, and almost wore it out in my bosom.  We afterwards improved in this mode of intercourse, and, by various preconcerted signals, were able to carry on our correspondence altogether in the night.  Not a day passed that we did not exchange letters, which, though they contained few facts, and always expressed the same sentiments, still repeated what we were never tired of hearing.  To the moment at which I was to receive a letter from Veenah, my thoughts were continually and anxiously turned:  and it now seems to me as if our passion was inflamed yet more by this sort of intercourse, than by our personal interviews.  I am convinced it wrought more powerfully upon our imaginations.  In the mean time I continued my daily attendance at college, though my studies were utterly neglected, one single object absorbing all my thoughts and feelings.

“I know not whether the evident change in my habits induced my old enemy, Balty Mahu, to observe my motions.  But so it was, that one moonlight night I thought I was watched by some person; and on the following night an individual of the same figure, and whom I now suspected to be Balty Mahu, came suddenly from a cross street, and passed near me.  A few evenings afterwards, instead of a letter, I received a scrap of paper from Veenah, on which was written the following words:—­

“We are discovered.  Balty Mahu, who is my relative and your enemy, has been here.  He has persuaded my father that you are an unbeliever.  I am denied pen and ink.  If you cannot convince my father of his error, O! pity, and try to forget, your unhappy VEENAH.”