h of lightning danced vividly before my eyes,
followed by a crashing peal of thunder, I saw to what end of a wild
journey I had come! Those heavy gates--that undefined stretch of
land--those ghostly glimmers of motionless white like spectral
mile-stones emerging from the gloom--I knew it all too well--it was the
cemetery! I looked through the iron palisades with the feverish
interest of one who watches the stage curtain rise on the last scene of
a tragedy. The lightning sprung once more across the sky, and showed me
for a brief second the distant marble outline of the Romani vault.
There the drama began--where would it end? Slowly, slowly there flitted
into my thoughts the face of my lost child--the young, serious face as
it had looked when the calm, preternaturally wise smile of Death had
rested upon it; and then a curious feeling of pity possessed me--pity
that her little body should be lying stiffly out there, not in the
vault, but under the wet sod, in such a relentless storm of rain. I
wanted to take her up from that cold couch--to carry her to some home
where there should be light and heat and laughter--to warm her to life
again within my arms; and as my brain played with these foolish
fancies, slow hot tears forced themselves into my eyes and scalded my
cheeks as they fell. These tears relieved me--gradually the tightly
strung tension of my nerves relaxed, and I recovered my usual composure
by degrees. Turning deliberately away from the beckoning grave-stones,
I walked back to the city through the thick of the storm, this time
with an assured step and a knowledge of where I was going. I did not
reach my hotel till past midnight, but this was not late for Naples,
and the curiosity of the fat French hall-porter was not so much excited
by the lateness of my arrival as by the disorder of my apparel.

"Ah, Heaven!" he cried; "that monsieur the distinguished should have
been in such a storm all unprotected! Why did not monsieur send for his
carriage?" I cut short his exclamations by dropping five francs into
his ever-ready hand, assuring him that I had thoroughly enjoyed the
novelty of a walk in bad weather, whereat he smiled and congratulated
me as much as he had just commiserated me. On reaching my own rooms, my
valet Vincenzo stared at my dripping and disheveled condition, but was
discreetly mute. He quickly assisted me to change my wet clothes for a
warm dressing-gown, and then brought a glass of mulled port wine, b