om his countenance,
all that betrayed the worldly levity of his character. He was acting a
part, and he dressed and looked it.

"My father!" she said, quickly, and in Italian. "What of him? And who
are you, signor? I know you not." Peschiera smiled benignly, and replied
in a tone in which great respect was softened by a kind of parental
tenderness,--"Suffer me to explain, and listen to me while I speak."
Then, quietly seating himself on the bench beside her, he looked into
her eyes, and resumed,--

"Doubtless you have heard of the Count di Peschiera?"

VIOLANTE.--"I heard that name, as a child, when in Italy. And when she
with whom I then dwelt (my father's aunt) fell ill and died, I was
told that my home in Italy was gone, that it had passed to the Count di
Peschiera,--my father's foe!"

PESCHTERA.--"And your father, since then, has taught you to hate this
fancied foe?"

VIOLANTE.--"Nay, my father did but forbid me ever to breathe his name."

PESCHIERA.--"Alas! what years of suffering and exile might have been
saved your father, had he but been more just to his early friend and
kinsman,--nay, had he but less cruelly concealed the secret of his
retreat. Fair child, I am that Giulio Franzini, that Count di Peschiera.
I am the man you have been told to regard as your father's foe. I am the
man on whom the Austrian Emperor bestowed his lands. And now judge if I
am, in truth, the foe. I have come hither to seek your father, in order
to dispossess myself of my sovereign's gift. I have come but with one
desire,--to restore Alphonso to his native land, and to surrender the
heritage that was forced upon me."

VIOLANTE.--"My father, my dear father! His grand heart will have room
once more. Oh, this is noble enmity, true revenge! I understand it,
signor, and so will my father, for such would have been his revenge on
you. You have seen him?"

PESCHIERA.--"No, not yet. I would not see him till I had seen yourself;
for you, in truth, are the arbiter of his destinies, as of mine."

VIOLANTE.--"I, Count? I--arbiter of my father's destinies? Is it
possible?"

PESCHIERA (with a look of compassionate admiration, and in a tone yet
more emphatically parental).--"How lovely is that innocent joy! But
do not indulge it yet. Perhaps it is a sacrifice which is asked from
you,--a sacrifice too hard to bear. Do not interrupt me. Listen still,
and you will see why I could not speak to your father until I had
obtained an interview with