as not known.

CHAPTER XXXI.

A SCENE.--LUCILLA'S STRANGE CONDUCT-GODOLPHIN PASSES THROUGH A SEVERE
ORDEAL.--EGERIA'S GROTTO, AND WHAT THERE HAPPENS.

Let us pass over Godolphin's most painful task. What Lucilla's feelings
were, the reader may imagine; and yet, her wayward and unanalysed temper
mocked at once imagination and expression to depict its sufferings or
its joys.

The brother of Volktman's wife was sent for: he and his wife took
possession of the abode of death. This, if possible, heightened
Lucilla's anguish. The apathetic and vain character of the middle
classes in Rome, which her relations shared, stung her heart by
contrasting its own desolate abandonment to grief. Above all, she was
revolted by the unnatural ceremonies of a Roman funeral. The corpse
exposed--the cheeks painted--the parading procession, all shocked
the delicacy of her real and reckless affliction. But when this was
over--when the rite of death was done, and when, in the house wherein
her sire had presided, and she herself had been left to a liberty wholly
unrestricted, she saw strangers (for such comparatively her relatives
were to her) settling themselves down, with vacant countenances and
light words, to the common occupations of life,--when she saw them move,
alter (nay, talk calmly, and sometimes with jests, of selling), those
little household articles of furniture which, homely and worn as they
were, were hallowed to her by a thousand dear, and infantine, and filial
recollections;--when, too, she found herself treated as a child, and, in
some measure, as a dependant,--when she, the wild, the free, saw herself
subjected to restraint--nay, heard the commonest actions of her life
chidden and reproved,--when she saw the trite and mean natures which
thus presumed to lord it over her, and assume empire in the house of
one, of whose wild and lofty, though erring speculations--of whose
generous though abstract elements of character, she could comprehend
enough to respect, while what she did not comprehend heightened the
respect into awe;--then, the more vehement and indignant passions of her
mind broke forth! her flashing eye, her scornful gesture, her mysterious
threat, and her open defiance, astonished always, sometimes amused, but
more often terrified, the apathetic and superstitious Italians.

Godolphin, moved by interest and pity for the daughter of his friend,
called once or twice after the funeral at the house; and commended