not at hand to advise him.
His conscience smote him bitterly; and half in despair, half in the
courageous wrath of jealousy, he resolved to repair to the palace of
the prince himself, and demand his captive in the face of his assembled
guests.

CHAPTER XIII.

We must go back to the preceding night. The actress and her nurse had
returned from the theatre; and Isabel, fatigued and exhausted, had
thrown herself on a sofa, while Gionetta busied herself with the long
tresses which, released from the fillet that bound them, half concealed
the form of the actress, like a veil of threads of gold; and while she
smoothed the luxuriant locks, the old nurse ran gossiping on about the
little events of the night,--the scandal and politics of the scenes and
the tire-room.

The clock sounded the hour of midnight, and still Isabel detained the
nurse; for a vague and foreboding fear, she could not account for, made
her seek to protract the time of solitude and rest.

At length Gionetta's voice was swallowed up in successive yawns. She
took her lamp and departed to her own room, which was placed in the
upper story of the house. Isabel was alone. The half-hour after midnight
sounded dull and distant, all was still, and she was about to enter her
sleeping-room, when she heard the hoofs of a horse at full speed. The
sound ceased; there was a knock at the door. Her heart beat violently;
but fear gave way to another sentiment when she heard a voice, too well
known, calling on her name. She went to the door.

"Open, Isabel,--it is Zicci," said the voice again.

And why did the actress feel fear no more, and why did that virgin hand
unbar the door to admit, without a scruple or, a doubt, at that late
hour, the visit of the fairest cavalier of Naples? I know not; but Zicci
had become her destiny, and she obeyed the voice of her preserver as if
it were the command of Fate.

Zicci entered with a light and hasty step. His horseman's cloak fitted
tightly to his noble form, and the raven plumes of his broad hat threw a
gloomy shade over his commanding features.

The girl followed him into the room, trembling and blushing deeply, and
stood before him with the lamp she held shining upward on her cheek, and
the long hair that fell like a shower of light over the bare shoulders
and heaving bust.

"Isabel," said Zicci, in a voice that spoke deep emotion, "I am by thy
side once more to save thee. Not a moment is to be lost. Thou must fly