ise as one of honour."

"I give it," said Leonard, positively. "But how can I serve Riccabocca?
How aid in--"

"Thus," interrupted Harley: "the spell of your writings is, that,
unconsciously to ourselves, they make us better and nobler. And your
writings are but the impressions struck off from your mind. Your
conversation, when you are roused, has the same effect. And as you grow
more familiar with Madame di Negra, I wish you to speak of your boyhood,
your youth. Describe the exile as you have seen him,--so touching
amidst his foibles, so grand amidst the petty privations of his fallen
fortunes, so benevolent while poring over his hateful Machiavelli,
so stingless in his wisdom of the serpent, so playfully astute in his
innocence of the dove--I leave the picture to your knowledge of humour
and pathos. Describe Violante brooding over her Italian Poets, and
filled with dreams of her fatherland; describe her with all the flashes
of her princely nature, shining forth through humble circumstance and
obscure position; waken in your listener compassion, respect, admiration
for her kindred exiles,--and I think our work is done. She will
recognize evidently those whom her brother seeks. She will question
you closely where you met with them, where they now are. Protect that
secret; say at once that it is not your own. Against your descriptions
and the feelings they excite, she will not be guarded as against mine.
And there are other reasons why your influence over this woman of mixed
nature may be more direct and effectual than my own."

"Nay, I cannot conceive that."

"Believe it, without asking me to explain," answered Harley.

For he did not judge it necessary to say to Leonard: "I am high-born and
wealthy, you a peasant's son, and living by your exertions. This woman
is ambitious and distressed. She might have projects on me that would
counteract mine on her. You she would but listen to, and receive,
through the sentiments of good or of poetical that are in her; you she
would have no interest to subjugate, no motive to ensnare."

"And now," said Harley, turning the subject, "I have another object in
view. This foolish sage friend of ours, in his bewilderment and fears,
has sought to save Violante from one rogue by promising her hand to a
man who, unless my instincts deceive me, I suspect much disposed to be
another. Sacrifice such exuberance of life and spirit to that bloodless
heart, to that cold and earthward intellec