that she could never enjoy, peacefully, any
happiness which caused sorrow to her parents.

With Bartolomeo, as with his daughter, the hesitations of this period
caused by the native goodness of their souls were, nevertheless,
compelled to give way before their pride and the rancor of their
Corsican nature. They encouraged each other in their anger, and closed
their eyes to the future. Perhaps they mutually flattered themselves
that the one would yield to the other.

At last, on Ginevra's birthday, her mother, in despair at the
estrangement which, day by day, assumed a more serious character,
meditated an attempt to reconcile the father and daughter, by help of
the memories of this family anniversary. They were all three sitting in
Bartolomeo's study. Ginevra guessed her mother's intention by the timid
hesitation on her face, and she smiled sadly.

At this moment a servant announced two notaries, accompanied by
witnesses. Bartolomeo looked fixedly at these persons, whose cold and
formal faces were grating to souls so passionately strained as those of
the three chief actors in this scene. The old man turned to his daughter
and looked at her uneasily. He saw upon her face a smile of triumph
which made him expect some shock; but, after the manner of savages,
he affected to maintain a deceitful indifference as he gazed at the
notaries with an assumed air of calm curiosity. The strangers sat down,
after being invited to do so by a gesture of the old man.

"Monsieur is, no doubt, M. le Baron di Piombo?" began the oldest of the
notaries.

Bartolomeo bowed. The notary made a slight inclination of the head,
looked at Ginevra with a sly expression, took out his snuff-box, opened
it, and slowly inhaled a pinch, as if seeking for the words with which
to open his errand; then, while uttering them, he made continual pauses
(an oratorical manoeuvre very imperfectly represented by the printer's
dash--).

"Monsieur," he said, "I am Monsieur Roguin, your daughter's notary,
and we have come--my colleague and I--to fulfil the intentions
of the law and--put an end to the divisions which--appear--to
exist--between yourself and Mademoiselle, your daughter,--on the
subject--of--her--marriage with Monsieur Luigi Porta."

This speech, pedantically delivered, probably seemed to Monsieur Roguin
so fine that his hearer could not at once understand it. He paused, and
looked at Bartolomeo with that peculiar expression of the mere business
la