f which she fancied (we say "fancied,"
because we do not unhesitatingly adopt Hilda's present view, but rather
suppose her misled by her feelings)--of which she fancied herself guilty
towards her friend, she suddenly remembered a sealed packet that
Miriam had confided to her. It had been put into her hands with earnest
injunctions of secrecy and care, and if unclaimed after a certain
period, was to be delivered according to its address. Hilda had
forgotten it; or, rather, she had kept the thought of this commission in
the background of her consciousness, with all other thoughts referring
to Miriam.

But now the recollection of this packet, and the evident stress which
Miriam laid upon its delivery at the specified time, impelled Hilda to
hurry up the staircase of her tower, dreading lest the period should
already have elapsed.

No; the hour had not gone by, but was on the very point of passing.
Hilda read the brief note of instruction, on a corner of the envelope,
and discovered, that, in case of Miriam's absence from Rome, the packet
was to be taken to its destination that very day.

"How nearly I had violated my promise!" said Hilda. "And, since we are
separated forever, it has the sacredness of an injunction from a dead
friend. There is no time to be lost."

So Hilda set forth in the decline of the afternoon, and pursued her way
towards the quarter of the city in which stands the Palazzo Cenci. Her
habit of self-reliance was so simply strong, so natural, and now so well
established by long use, that the idea of peril seldom or never occurred
to Hilda, in her lonely life.

She differed, in this particular, from the generality of her sex,
--although the customs and character of her native land often produce
women who meet the world with gentle fearlessness, and discover that its
terrors have been absurdly exaggerated by the tradition of mankind. In
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the apprehensiveness of women is
quite gratuitous. Even as matters now stand, they are really safer in
perilous situations and emergencies than men; and might be still more
so, if they trusted themselves more confidingly to the chivalry of
manhood. In all her wanderings about Rome, Hilda had gone and returned
as securely as she had been accustomed to tread the familiar street of
her New England village, where every face wore a look of recognition.
With respect to whatever was evil, foul, and ugly, in this populous and
corrupt city, s