and refinement over the south of Europe.

The ceiling of that room was a master-piece of the united arts of
sculpture and painting. First, the hand of the sculptor had carved it
into numerous medallions, on which the pencil of the painter had then
delineated the most remarkable scenes in early Florentine history. Round
the sides, or cornices, were beautifully sculptured in marble the heads
of the principal ancestors of the Count of Arestino.

It was within half an hour of midnight, and the beautiful Giulia
Arestino was sitting restlessly upon an ottoman, now holding her breath
to listen if a step were approaching the private door behind the
tapestry--then glancing anxiously toward a clepsydra on the mantel.

"What can detain him thus? will he deceive me?" she murmured to herself.
"Oh! how foolish--worse than foolish--mad--to confide in the promise of
a professed bandit! The jewels are worth a thousand times the reward I
have pledged myself to give him! wretched being that I am!"

And with her fair hand she drew back the dark masses of her hair that
had fallen too much over her polished brow: and on this polished brow
she pressed that fair hand, for her head ached with the intensity of
mingled suspense and alarm.

Her position was indeed a dangerous one as the reader is already aware.
In the infatuation of her strong, unconquerable, but not less guilty
love for the handsome spendthrift Orsini, she had pledged her diamonds
to Isaachar ben Solomon for an enormous sum of money, every ducat of
which had passed without an hour's delay into the possession of the
young marquis.

Those diamonds were the bridal gift of her fond and attached, but, alas!
deceived husband, who, being many years older than herself, studied
constantly how to afford pleasure to the wife of whom he was so proud.
He was himself an extraordinary judge of the nature, purity and value of
precious stones; and, being immensely rich, he had collected a perfect
museum of curiosities in that particular department. In fact, it was his
amateur study, or, as we should say in these times, his peculiar hobby;
and hence the impossibility of imposing on him by the substitution of a
hired or a false set of diamonds for those which he had presented to his
wife.

It was, therefore, absolutely necessary to get these diamonds back from
Isaachar, by fair means or foul. The fair means were to redeem them by
the payment of the loan advanced upon them; but the sum was so