sness. She soothed herself with the idea that a little while
would suffice to convince Don Ambrosio of the fallacy of his hopes,
and that he would be induced to restore her to her home. Her
transports of terror and affliction, therefore, subsided, in a few
days, into a passive, yet anxious melancholy, with which she awaited
the hoped-for event.

In the meanwhile, all those artifices were employed that are
calculated to charm the senses, ensnare the feelings, and dissolve the
heart into tenderness. Don Ambrosio was a master of the subtle arts of
seduction. His very mansion breathed an enervating atmosphere of
languor and delight. It was here, amidst twilight saloons and dreamy
chambers, buried among groves of orange and myrtle, that he shut
himself up at times from the prying world, and gave free scope to the
gratification of his pleasures.

The apartments were furnished in the most sumptuous and voluptuous
manner; the silken couches swelled to the touch, and sunk in downy
softness beneath the slightest pressure. The paintings and statues,
all told some classic tale of love, managed, however, with an
insidious delicacy; which, while it banished the grossness that might
disgust, was the more calculated to excite the imagination. There the
blooming Adonis was seen, not breaking away to pursue the boisterous
chase, but crowned with flowers, and languishing in the embraces of
celestial beauty. There Acis wooed his Galatea in the shade, with the
Sicilian sea spreading in halcyon serenity before them. There were
depicted groups of fauns and dryads, fondly reclining in summer
bowers, and listening to the liquid piping of the reed; or the wanton
satyrs, surprising some wood-nymph during her noontide slumber. There,
too, on the storied tapestry, might be seen the chaste Diana,
stealing, in the mystery of moonlight, to kiss the sleeping Endymion;
while Cupid and Psyche, entwined in immortal marble, breathed on each
other's lips the early kiss of love.

The ardent rays of the sun were excluded from these balmy halls; soft
and tender music from unseen musicians floated around, seeming to
mingle with the perfumes that were exhaled from a thousand flowers. At
night, when the moon shed a fairy light over the scene, the tender
serenade would rise from among the bowers of the garden, in which the
fine voice of Don Ambrosio might often be distinguished; or the
amorous flute would be heard along the mountain, breathing in its
pensive c