been his wife! And what was her fate? and what could
have been the awful mystery that wrapt their history? These thoughts
dwelt in my mind, and, framing ten thousand solutions of the secret, I
at last sunk into sleep.

The following day I took my departure for Rome. On my arrival, what was
my horror to discover that Nichola had died the day after my
departure from Naples, and that he had been buried in the strangers'
burial-ground; but in what spot, no one knew--nor had he one left who
could point out his grave. Again my oath came to my mind, and I could
not divest myself of the thought, that in the series of events which
prevented its accomplishment chance had nothing to do; and that the hand
of a guiding Providence had worked these apparent accidents for His own
wise ends.

From that hour I guarded, how closely I cannot say, this picture from
all human eye; but if I did so, the very impulse which drove me to
conceal it from all others led me to look upon it myself. Like the miser
who possesses a hidden treasure, ten thousand times dearer that it
is known to him alone, I have sat, hour by hour, in the silent
contemplation of it in my chamber; I have studied the features one by
one, till I almost thought the figure lived and breathed before me;
and often have I left the crowded and brilliant salon to seek, in the
stillness of my own home, the delicious calm and dreamy tranquillity
that painting ever inspired me with.

And so it had been my custom, when first I returned to Dresden, to sit
for days long with that picture open before me. As a work of art, it
possessed undoubted excellence; but I could not help feeling that its
mysterious history had invested it with an interest altogether deeper
and more powerful than the beauty of the execution could alone account
for. This habit had been first broken in upon by the numerous and varied
occupations my newly-arisen popularity brought upon me; and amid
the labours of the painting-room, and the gay hours of fashionable
dissipation, I had been now some weeks without once having seen it, when
the events I have just detailed, and my determination to copy from it,
brought it again fully to my mind.

The day which followed that long night of misery passed I know not how.
When I awoke from the deep musing my thoughts had fallen into, it was
already evening: the sun had set, and a soft twilight was sleeping on
all around. I opened my window, and let the cool breeze of the evenin