he grave nature of his advice, she exclaimed,--

"Ah, Excellency, you cannot know how dear to me that home is already.
And my father,--there would be no home, signor, without him!"

A deep and melancholy shade settled over the face of the cavalier. He
looked up at the quiet house buried amidst the vine-leaves, and turned
again to the vivid, animated face of the young actress.

"It is well," said he. "A simple heart may be its own best guide, and
so, go on, and prosper. Adieu, fair singer."

"Adieu, Excellency; but," and something she could not resist--an
anxious, sickening feeling of fear and hope,--impelled her to the
question, "I shall see you again, shall I not, at San Carlo?"

"Not, at least, for some time. I leave Naples to-day."

"Indeed!" and Viola's heart sank within her; the poetry of the stage was
gone.

"And," said the cavalier, turning back, and gently laying his hand on
hers,--"and, perhaps, before we meet, you may have suffered: known the
first sharp griefs of human life,--known how little what fame can gain,
repays what the heart can lose; but be brave and yield not,--not even to
what may seem the piety of sorrow. Observe yon tree in your neighbour's
garden. Look how it grows up, crooked and distorted. Some wind scattered
the germ from which it sprang, in the clefts of the rock; choked up and
walled round by crags and buildings, by Nature and man, its life has
been one struggle for the light,--light which makes to that life the
necessity and the principle: you see how it has writhed and twisted;
how, meeting the barrier in one spot, it has laboured and worked, stem
and branches, towards the clear skies at last. What has preserved it
through each disfavour of birth and circumstances,--why are its leaves
as green and fair as those of the vine behind you, which, with all
its arms, can embrace the open sunshine? My child, because of the very
instinct that impelled the struggle,--because the labour for the light
won to the light at length. So with a gallant heart, through every
adverse accident of sorrow and of fate to turn to the sun, to strive for
the heaven; this it is that gives knowledge to the strong and happiness
to the weak. Ere we meet again, you will turn sad and heavy eyes to
those quiet boughs, and when you hear the birds sing from them, and see
the sunshine come aslant from crag and housetop to be the playfellow
of their leaves, learn the lesson that Nature teaches you, and strive
through d