e,
and, stretching out her arms, find that the instinct had not deceived
her. But she early saw that he was reserved on his peculiar habits; and
if at times a chill, a foreboding, a suspicious awe crept over her, she
forebore to question him.

But his rambles were not always unaccompanied,--he took pleasure in
excursions less solitary. Often, when the sea lay before them like
a lake, the barren dreariness of the opposite coast of Cephallenia
contrasting the smiling shores on which they dwelt, Viola and himself
would pass days in cruising slowly around the coast, or in visits to
the neighbouring isles. Every spot of the Greek soil, "that fair
Fable-Land," seemed to him familiar; and as he conversed of the past and
its exquisite traditions, he taught Viola to love the race from which
have descended the poetry and the wisdom of the world. There was much in
Zanoni, as she knew him better, that deepened the fascination in which
Viola was from the first enthralled. His love for herself was so tender,
so vigilant, and had that best and most enduring attribute, that it
seemed rather grateful for the happiness in its own cares than vain of
the happiness it created. His habitual mood with all who approached him
was calm and gentle, almost to apathy. An angry word never passed his
lips,--an angry gleam never shot from his eyes. Once they had been
exposed to the danger not uncommon in those then half-savage lands. Some
pirates who infested the neighbouring coasts had heard of the arrival
of the strangers, and the seamen Zanoni employed had gossiped of their
master's wealth. One night, after Viola had retired to rest, she was
awakened by a slight noise below. Zanoni was not by her side; she
listened in some alarm. Was that a groan that came upon her ear? She
started up, she went to the door; all was still. A footstep now slowly
approached, and Zanoni entered calm as usual, and seemed unconscious of
her fears.

The next morning three men were found dead at the threshold of the
principal entrance, the door of which had been forced. They were
recognised in the neighbourhood as the most sanguinary and terrible
marauders of the coasts,--men stained with a thousand murders, and who
had never hitherto failed in any attempt to which the lust of rapine
had impelled them. The footsteps of many others were tracked to the
seashore. It seemed that their accomplices must have fled on the death
of their leaders. But when the Venetian Proveditore