, their pride, assured him
that Isabel was not the base and guilty thing he had dared for a moment
to suspect her. Lost in a labyrinth of doubts and surmises, Glyndon
turned on the practical sense of the sober Merton to assist and
enlighten him.

As may be well supposed, his friend listened to his account of his
interview with Zicci with a half-suppressed and ironical smile.

"Excellent, my dear friend! This Zicci is another Apollonius of
Tyana,--nothing less will satisfy you. What! is it possible that you
are the Clarence Glyndon of whose career such glowing hopes are
entertained,--you the man whose genius has been extolled by all the
graybeards? Not a boy turned out from a village school but would laugh
you to scorn. And so because Signor Zicci tells you that you will be
a marvellously great man if you revolt all your friends and blight all
your prospects by marrying a Neapolitan actress, you begin already to
think of--By Jupiter! I cannot talk patiently on the subject. Let the
girl alone,--that would be the proper plan; or else--"

"You talk very sensibly," interrupted Glyndon, "but you distract me. I
will go to Isabel's house; I will see her; I will judge for myself."

"That is certainly the best way to forget her," said Merton. Glyndon
seized his hat and sword, and was gone.

CHAPTER VII.

She was seated outside her door, the young actress. The sea, which in
that heavenly bay literally seems to sleep in the arms of the shore,
bounded the view in front; while to the right, not far off, rose the
dark and tangled crags to which the traveller of to-day is daily brought
to gaze on the tomb of Virgil, or compare with the Cavern of Pausilippo
the archway of Highgate Hill. There were a few fishermen loitering by
the cliffs, on which their nets were hung up to dry; and, at a distance,
the sound of some rustic pipe (more common at that day than in this),
mingled now and then with the bells of the lazy mules, broke the
voluptuous silence,--the silence of declining noon on the shores of
Naples. Never till you have enjoyed it, never till you have felt its
enervating but delicious charm, believe that you can comprehend all the
meaning of the dolce far niente; and when that luxury has been known,
when you have breathed the atmosphere of fairy land, then you will
no longer wonder why the heart ripens with so sudden and wild a power
beneath the rosy skies and amidst the glorious foliage of the South.

The young actres