enjoy the present," said Glyndon, with vivacity; "we are young,
rich, good-looking: let us not think of to-morrow."

"Bravo, Glyndon! Here we are at the hotel. Sleep sound, and don't dream
of Signor Zicci."

CHAPTER II.

Clarence Glyndon was a young man of small but independent fortune. He
had, early in life, evinced considerable promise in the art of painting,
and rather from enthusiasm than the want of a profession, he had
resolved to devote himself to a career which in England has been seldom
entered upon by persons who can live on their own means. Without being
a poet, Glyndon had also manifested a graceful faculty for verse, which
had contributed to win his entry into society above his birth. Spoiled
and flattered from his youth upward, his natural talents were in some
measure relaxed by indolence and that worldly and selfish habit of
thought which frivolous companionship often engenders, and which is
withering alike to stern virtue and high genius. The luxuriance of his
fancy was unabated; but the affections, which are the life of fancy, had
grown languid and inactive. His youth, his vanity, and a restless daring
and thirst of adventure had from time to time involved him in dangers
and dilemmas, out of which, of late, he had always extricated himself
with the ingenious felicity of a clever head and cool heart. He had
left England for Rome with the avowed purpose and sincere resolution of
studying the divine masterpieces of art; but pleasure had soon allured
him from ambition, and he quitted the gloomy palaces of Rome for the
gay shores and animated revelries of Naples. Here he had fallen in
love--deeply in love, as he said and thought--with a young person
celebrated at Naples, Isabel di Pisani. She was the only daughter of an
Italian by an English mother. The father had known better days; in his
prosperity he had travelled, and won in England the affections of a lady
of some fortune. He had been induced to speculate; he lost his all; he
settled at Naples, and taught languages and music. His wife died when
Isabel, christened from her mother, was ten years old. At sixteen she
came out on the stage; two years afterwards her father departed this
life, and Isabel was an orphan.

Glyndon, a man of pleasure and a regular attendant at the theatre, had
remarked the young actress behind the scenes; he fell in love with
her, and he told her so. The girl listened to him, perhaps from vanity,
perhaps from ambition,