as the revellers of the Carnival reserve as tributes
to especial loveliness. Hilda pressed her hand across her brow; she let
her eyelids fall, and, lifting them again, looked through the grotesque
and gorgeous show, the chaos of mad jollity, in quest of some object
by which she might assure herself that the whole spectacle was not an
illusion.

Beneath the balcony, she recognized a familiar and fondly remembered
face. The spirit of the hour and the scene exercised its influence over
her quick and sensitive nature; she caught up one of the rosebuds that
had been showered upon her, and aimed it at the sculptor; It hit the
mark; he turned his sad eyes upward, and there was Hilda, in whose
gentle presence his own secret sorrow and the obtrusive uproar of the
Carnival alike died away from his perception.

That night, the lamp beneath the Virgin's shrine burned as brightly as
if it had never been extinguished; and though the one faithful dove had
gone to her melancholy perch, she greeted Hilda rapturously the next
morning, and summoned her less constant companions, whithersoever they
had flown, to renew their homage.

CHAPTER L

MIRIAM, HILDA, KENYON, DONATELLO

The gentle reader, we trust, would not thank us for one of those minute
elucidations, which are so tedious, and, after all, so unsatisfactory,
in clearing up the romantic mysteries of a story. He is too wise to
insist upon looking closely at the wrong side of the tapestry, after the
right one has been sufficiently displayed to him, woven with the best of
the artist's skill, and cunningly arranged with a view to the harmonious
exhibition of its colors. If any brilliant, or beautiful, or even
tolerable effect have been produced, this pattern of kindly readers will
accept it at its worth, without tearing its web apart, with the idle
purpose of discovering how the threads have been knit together; for the
sagacity by which he is distinguished will long ago have taught him that
any narrative of human action and adventure whether we call it history
or romance--is certain to be a fragile handiwork, more easily rent than
mended. The actual experience of even the most ordinary life is full of
events that never explain themselves, either as regards their origin or
their tendency.

It would be easy, from conversations which we have held with the
sculptor, to suggest a clew to the mystery of Hilda's disappearance;
although, as long as she remained in Italy, ther