to
curdle the air, to extinguish the sun, to snap every link that connects
us to matter, and to benumb everything into death, except woe.

And this warm, young, southern nature but a moment before was so full of
joy and life, and vigorous, lofty hope. It never till now had known its
own intensity and depth. The virgin had never lifted the veil from her
own soul of woman.

What, till then, had Harley L'Estrange been to Violante? An ideal, a
dream of some imagined excellence, a type of poetry in the midst of the
common world. It had not been Harley the man,--it had been Harley the
Phantom. She had never said to herself, "He is identified with my love,
my hopes, my home, my future." How could she? Of such he himself had
never spoken; an internal voice, indeed, had vaguely, yet irresistibly,
whispered to her that, despite his light words, his feelings towards her
were grave and deep. O false voice! how it had deceived her! Her quick
convictions seized the all that Helen had left unsaid. And now suddenly
she felt what it is to love, and what it is to despair. So she sat,
crushed and solitary, neither murmuring nor weeping, only now and then
passing her hand across her brow, as if to clear away some cloud that
would not be dispersed; or heaving a deep sigh, as if to throw off some
load that no time henceforth could remove. There are certain moments
in life in which we say to ourselves, "All is over; no matter what else
changes, that which I have made my all is gone evermore--evermore!" And
our own thought rings back in our ears, "Evermore--evermore!"

CHAPTER VIII.

As Violante thus sat, a stranger, passing stealthily through the trees,
stood between herself and the evening sun. She saw him not. He paused a
moment, and then spoke low, in her native tongue, addressing her by the
name which she had borne in Italy. He spoke as a relation, and excused
his intrusion: "For," said he, "I come to suggest to the daughter
the means by which she can restore to her father his country and his
honours."

At the word "father" Violante roused herself, and all her love for that
father rushed back upon her with double force. It does so ever,--we
love most our parents at the moment when some tie less holy is abruptly
broken; and when the conscience says, "There, at least, is a love that
has never deceived thee!"

She saw before her a man of mild aspect and princely form. Peschiera
(for it was he) had banished from his dress, as fr