they had stood sat Mrs. Riccabocca at work. In the
belvidere, Riccabocca himself was conversing with his favourite servant.
But the casements and the door of the belvidere were open; and where
they sat, both wife and daughter could see the padrone leaning against
the wall, with his arms folded and his eyes fixed on the floor; while
Jackeymo, with one finger on his master's arm, was talking to him with
visible earnestness. And the daughter from the window and the wife from
her work directed tender, anxious eyes towards the still, thoughtful
form so dear to both. For the last day or two, Riccabocca had been
peculiarly abstracted, even to gloom. Each felt there was something
stirring at his heart,--neither, as yet, knew what.

Violante's room silently revealed the nature of the education by which
her character had been formed. Save a sketchbook, which lay open on a
desk at hand, and which showed talent exquisitely taught (for in this
Riccabocca had been her teacher), there was nothing that spoke of the
ordinary female accomplishments. No piano stood open, no harp occupied
yon nook, which seemed made for one; no broidery-frame, nor implements
of work, betrayed the usual and graceful resources of a girl; but ranged
on shelves against the wall were the best writers in English, Italian,
and French; and these betokened an extent of reading, that he who wishes
for a companion to his mind in the sweet commune of woman, which softens
and refines all it gives and takes in interchange, will never condemn as
masculine. You had but to look into Violante's face to see how noble
was the intelligence that brought soul to those lovely features. Nothing
hard, nothing dry and stern was there. Even as you detected knowledge,
it was lost in the gentleness of grace. In fact, whatever she gained in
the graver kinds of information became transmuted, through her heart and
her fancy, into spiritual, golden stores. Give her some tedious and arid
history, her imagination seized upon beauties other readers had
passed by, and, like the eye of the artist, detected everywhere the
Picturesque. Something in her mind seemed to reject all that was mean
and commonplace, and to bring out all that was rare and elevated in
whatever it received. Living so apart from all companions of her age,
she scarcely belonged to the present time. She dwelt in the Past, as
Sabrina in her crystal well. Images of chivalry, of the Beautiful and
the Heroic,--such as, in reading