you
could not comprehend, the nature of her whom you think to love. From my
childhood upward, I have felt as if I were marked out for some strange
and preternatural doom; as if I were singled from my kind. This feeling
(and, oh! at times it is one of delirious and vague delight, at others
of the darkest gloom) deepens with me day by day. It is like the shadow
of twilight, spreading slowly and solemnly round. My hour approaches; a
little while, and it will be night!"

As she spoke, Glyndon listened with visible emotion and perturbation.
"Isabel!" he exclaimed, as she ceased, "your words more than ever
enchain me to you. As you feel, I feel. I, too, have been ever haunted
with a chill and unearthly foreboding. Amidst the crowds of men I have
felt alone. In all my pleasures, my toils, my pursuits, a warning
voice has murmured in my ear, 'Time has a dark mystery in store for thy
manhood.' When you spoke it was as the voice of my own soul."

Isabel gazed upon him in wonder and fear. Her countenance was as white
as marble, and those features, so divine in their rare symmetry, might
have served the Greek with a study for the Pythoness when, from the
mystic cavern and the bubbling spring, she first hears the voice of the
inspiring god. Gradually the rigor and tension of that wonderful face
relaxed, the color returned, the pulse beat, the heart animated the
frame.

"Tell me," she said, turning partially aside, "tell me, have you seen,
do you know, a stranger in this city,--one of whom wild stories are
afloat?"

"You speak of Zicci. I have seen him; I know him! And you? Ah! he, too,
would be my rival,--he, too, would bear thee from me!"

"You err," said Isabel, hastily and with a deep sigh,--"he pleads for
you; he informed me of your love; he besought me not--not to reject it."

"Strange being, incomprehensible enigma, why did you name him?"

"Why? Ah! I would have asked whether, when you first saw him, the
foreboding, the instinct, of which you spoke came on you more fearfully,
more intelligibly than before; whether you felt at once repelled from
him, yet attracted towards him; whether you felt [and the actress spoke
with hurried animation] that with Him was connected the secret of your
life!"

"All this I felt," answered Glyndon, in a trembling voice, "the first
time I was in his presence. Though all around me was gay,--music,
amidst lamp-lit trees, light converse near, and heaven without a cloud
above,--my knees kno