s you could no doubt secure the retention of
the half you hold; and if you survive your kinsman, you would enjoy the
whole. A most desirable marriage; and, if made, I suppose that would
suffice to obtain your cousin's amnesty and grace?"

"You say it."

"But even without such marriage, since the emperor's clemency has been
extended to so many of the proscribed, it is perhaps probable that your
cousin might be restored?"

"It once seemed to me possible," said the count, reluctantly; "but since
I have been in England, I think not. The recent revolution in France,
the democratic spirit rising in Europe, tend to throw back the cause
of a proscribed rebel. England swarms with revolutionists; my cousin's
residence in this country is in itself suspicious. The suspicion is
increased by his strange seclusion. There are many Italians here who
would aver that they had met with him, and that he was still engaged in
revolutionary projects."

"Aver--untruly?"

"Ma foi, it comes to the same thing; 'les absents ont toujours tort.'
I speak to a man of the world. No; without some such guarantee for his
faith as his daughter's marriage with myself would give, his recall is
improbable. By the heaven above us, it shall be impossible!" The count
rose as he said this,--rose as if the mask of simulation had fairly
fallen from the visage of crime; rose tall and towering, a very image of
masculine power and strength, beside the slight, bended form and sickly
face of the intellectual schemer. And had you seen them thus confronted
and contrasted, you would have felt that if ever the time should come
when the interest of the one would compel him openly to denounce
or boldly to expose the other, the odds were that the brilliant and
audacious reprobate would master the weaker nerve but superior wit
of the furtive traitor. Randal was startled; but rising also, he said
carelessly,

"What if this guarantee can no longer be given; what if, in despair
of return, and in resignation to his altered fortunes, your cousin has
already married his daughter to some English suitor?"

"Ah, that would indeed be, next to my own marriage with her, the most
fortunate thing that could happen to myself."

"How? I don't understand!"

"Why, if my cousin has so abjured his birthright, and forsworn his rank;
if this heritage, which is so dangerous from its grandeur, pass, in case
of his pardon, to some obscure Englishman,--a foreigner, a native of a
country that