overwhelmed him; again he awakened, and there he was in the lonely summer-room, and Medora, with her pale childlike face and black garments, at his side; but he met the large dark eyes filled with a strange wild light, and he knew it was no dream. 66 Leave me now," said Medora, "but on your life be silent. Life and secrecy are one. Farewell!" Dizzy with expectation, Leoni returned to the boat. The clock of San Francisco's Abbey struck; he had been away but one hour. Pallid and abstracted, there was something in his look that effectually silenced the boatmen; nay, they remained in gloomy stillness after he had left them. "He has met with a refusal," at length said Stefano. "Rather say, that there is evil in yon dreary palazzo and that pale girl, and that their influence is on him. The lady Medora is kind and generous, but there is a curse follows her; and when did ever gift of hers turn to good!" "The notary, Signor Grazie, awaits your pleasure,” said a domestic, on Leoni's entrance to his palace. The notary's business was soon told. The Marchese Ravenna, a distant relative of the young Count, had made him his heir; and boundless was the wealth the aged miser had left behind him. That evening saw Leoni a welcome guest at his uncle's; and but a few weeks fled past, ere orange-flowers bound the bridal tresses of his gentle cousin. The same day died Count O Manfredi; and, as if her life were one with his, Donna Medora breathed her last at the very moment of her father's death. "One, two, three; so late, so very late," exclaimed the Countess di Montefiore," and Leoni still from home; there was a time when I dreamed not of keeping these solitary vigils." Wearily Lolah arose from the velvet ottoman, and again the hour was struck by one of their own clocks, a few minutes later than the Abbey; it was succeeded (for the time-piece was a rare device of a skillful artist) by a sweet and lively air-one of those Neapolitan barcarolles which, like the glad music of Memnon's lyre, seemed inspired by the morning sunshine. 66 Mockery," sighed the youthful watcher, "for the flight of time to be told in music!" She began to pace the room,-that common resource of extreme lassitude, when sleep, to which the will consents not, hangs heavy on the eyelids. Truly night was made for sleep; since to its wakeful hours belongs an oppression unknown to the very dreariest hours of day. The stillness is so deep, the solitude so unbroken, the fever brought on by want of rest so weakens the nerves, that the imagination exercises despotic and unwholesome power, till, if the heart have a fear or a sorrow, up it arises in all the force and terror of gigantic exaggeration. |