talent
for painting; and she read all the books that came in her way with an
avidity that bespoke at once the restlessness and the genius of her
mind.

This description of Lucilla must, I need scarcely repeat, be considered
as applicable to her at some years distant from the time in which the
young Englishman first attracted her childish but ardent imagination.
To her, that face, with its regular and harmonious features, its golden
hair, and soft, shy, melancholy aspect, seemed as belonging to a higher
and brighter order of beings than those who, with exaggerated lineaments
and swarthy hues, surrounded and displeased her. She took a strange
and thrilling pleasure in creeping to his side, and looking up, when
unobserved, at the countenance which, in his absence, she loved to
imitate with her pencil by day; and to recall in her dreams at night.
But she seldom spoke to him, and she shrank, covered with painful
blushes, from his arms, whenever he attempted to bestow on her those
caresses which children are wont to claim as an attention. Once,
however, she summoned courage to ask him to teach her English, and he
complied. She learned that language with surprising facility; and as
Volktman loved its sound she grew familiar with its difficulties, by
always addressing her father in a tongue which became inexpressibly dear
to her. And the young stranger delighted to hear that soft and melodious
voice, with its trembling, Italian accent, make music from the nervous
and masculine language of his native land. Scarce accountably to
himself, a certain tender and peculiar interest in the fortunes of
this singular and bewitching child grew up within him--peculiar and not
easily accounted for, in that it was not wholly the interest we feel in
an engaging child, and yet was of no more interested nor sinister order.
Were there truth in the science of the stars, I should say that they
had told him her fate was to have affinity with his; and with that
persuasion, something mysterious and more than ordinarily tender,
entered into the affection he felt for the daughter of his friend.

The Englishman was himself of a romantic character. He had been
self-taught; and his studies, irregular though often deep, had given
directions to his intellect frequently enthusiastic and unsound. His
imagination preponderated over his judgment; and any pursuit that
attracted his imagination won his entire devotion, until his natural
sagacity proved it decei