ou should ally yourself with a kinsman. But one
kinsman, and he the next in blood, presented himself. In short, Alphonso
regains all that he lost on the day in which his daughter gives her
hand to Giulio Franzini, Count di Peschiera. Ah," continued the count,
mournfully, "you shriek, you recoil. He thus submitted to your choice is
indeed unworthy of you. You are scarce in the spring of life, he is in
its waning autumn. Youth loves youth. He does not aspire to your love.
All that he can say is, love is not the only joy of the heart,--it is
joy to raise from ruin a beloved father; joy to restore, to a land poor
in all but memories, a chief in whom it reverences a line of heroes.
These are the joys I offer to you,--you, a daughter, and an Italian
maid. Still silent? Oh, speak to me!"

Certainly this Count Peschiera knew well how woman is to be wooed and
won; and never was woman more sensitive to those high appeals which most
move all true earnest womanhood than was the young Violante. Fortune
favoured him in the moment chosen. Harley was wrenched away from her
hopes, and love a word erased from her language. In the void of the
world, her father's image alone stood clear and visible. And she who
from infancy had so pined to serve that father, who at first learned to
dream of Harley as that father's friend! She could restore to him all
for which the exile sighed; and by a sacrifice of self,--self-sacrifice,
ever in itself such a temptation to the noble! Still, in the midst of
the confusion and disturbance of her mind, the idea of marriage with
another seemed so terrible and revolting, that she could not at once
conceive it; and still that instinct of openness and honour, which
pervaded all her character, warned even her inexperience that there was
something wrong in this clandestine appeal to herself.

Again the count besought her to speak, and with an effort she said,
irresolutely,

"If it be as you say, it is not for me to answer you; it is for my
father."

"Nay," replied Peschiera. "Pardon, if I contradict you. Do you know so
little of your father as to suppose that he will suffer his interest
to dictate to his pride? He would refuse, perhaps, even to receive my
visit, to hear my explanations; but certainly he would refuse to buy
back his inheritance by the sacrifice of his daughter to one whom he has
deemed his foe, and whom the mere disparity of years would incline the
world to say he had made the barter of his pers