is handsome, bellissimo; and when you are his
wife,--for they say these English are never satisfied unless they
marry--"

"Wife! English! Whom are you talking of?"

"Why, the young English signor, to be sure."

"Chut! I thought you spoke of Zicci."

"Oh! Signor Zicci is very rich and very generous; but he wants to be
your cavalier, not your husband. I see that,--leave me alone. When you
are married, then you will see how amiable Signor Zicci will be. Oh, per
fede! but he will be as close to your husband as the yolk to the white;
that he will.

"Silence, Gionetta! How wretched I am to have no one else to speak
to--to advise me. Oh, beautiful sun!" and the girl pressed her hand to
her heart with wild energy, "why do you light every spot but this? Dark,
dark! And a little while ago I was so calm, so innocent, so gay. I did
not hate you then, Gionetta, hateful as your talk was; I hate you now.
Go in; leave me alone--leave me."

"And indeed it is time I should leave you, for the polenta will be
spoiled, and you have eaten nothing all day. If you don't eat you will
lose your beauty, my darling, and then nobody will care for you. Nobody
cares for us when we grow ugly,--I know that; and then you must, like
old Gionetta, get some Isabel of your own to spoil. I'll go and see to
the polenta."

"Since I have known this man," said the actress, half aloud, "since his
dark eyes have fascinated me, I am no longer the same. I long to escape
from myself,--to glide with the sunbeam over the hill-tops; to become
something that is not of earth. Is it, indeed, that he is a sorcerer, as
I have heard? Phantoms float before me at night, and a fluttering
like the wing of a bird within my heart seems as if the spirit were
terrified, and would break its cage."

While murmuring these incoherent rhapsodies, a step that she did not
hear approached the actress, and a light hand touched her arm.

"Isabella! carissima! Isabella!"

She turned, and saw Glyndon. The sight of his fair young face calmed her
at once. She did not love him, yet his sight gave her pleasure. She had
for him a kind and grateful feeling. Ah, if she had never beheld Zicci!

"Isabel," said the Englishman, drawing her again to the bench from
which she had risen, and seating himself beside her, "you know how
passionately I love thee. Hitherto thou hast played with my impatience
and my ardor, thou hast sometimes smiled, sometimes frowned away my
importunities for a reply