ided in her, consulted with
her, her sense had seemed to quicken--her whole mind to expand.

"My dear," said the sage. "I vow and declare that Machiavelli was a fool
to you. And I have been as dull as the chair I sit upon, to deny myself so
many years the comfort and counsel of such a--but, _corpo di Baccho_!
forget all about rank; and so now to bed."

"One must not holloa till one's out of the wood," muttered the ungrateful,
suspicious villain, as he lighted the chamber candle.

Chapter III.

Riccabocca could not confine himself to the precincts within the walls to
which he condemned Violante. Resuming his spectacles, and wrapped in his
cloak, he occasionally sallied forth upon a kind of outwatch or
reconnoitring expedition--restricting himself, however, to the immediate
neighborhood, and never going quite out of sight of his house. His
favorite walk was to the summit of a hillock overgrown with stunted
brushwood. Here he would seat himself musingly, often till the hoofs of
Randal's horse rang on the winding road, as the sun set, over fading
herbage, red and vaporous, in autumnal skies. Just below the hillock, and
not two hundred yards from his own house, was the only other habitation in
view--a charming, thoroughly English cottage, though somewhat imitated from
the Swiss--with gable ends, thatched roof, and pretty projecting casements,
opening through creepers and climbing roses. From his height he commanded
the gardens of this cottage, and his eye of artist was pleased, from the
first sight, with the beauty which some exquisite taste had given to the
ground. Even in that cheerless season of the year, the garden wore a
summer smile; the evergreens were so bright and various, and the few
flowers still left, so hardy and so healthful. Facing the south, a
colonnade, or covered gallery, of rustic woodwork had been formed, and
creeping plants, lately set, were already beginning to clothe its columns.
Opposite to this colonnade there was a fountain which reminded Riccabocca
of his own at the deserted Casino. It was, indeed, singularly like it: the
same circular shape, the same girdle of flowers around it. But the jet
from it varied every day--fantastic and multiform, like the sports of a
Naiad--sometimes shooting up like a tree, sometimes shaped as a
convolvulus, sometimes tossing from its silver spray a flower of
vermilion, or a fruit of gold--as if at play with its toy like a happy
child. And near the fountain