ed Capuchin, from which it appeared that the
child who had so much interested her was her near kinswoman. Perhaps,
had her house remained at the height of its power and splendor, she
might have rejected with scorn the idea of a kinswoman whose existence
had been owing to a _mesalliance_; but a member of an exiled and
disinherited family, deriving her only comfort from unworldly sources,
she regarded this event as an opportunity afforded her to make expiation
for one of the sins of her house. The beauty and winning graces of her
young kinswoman were not without their influence in attracting a lonely
heart deprived of the support of natural ties. The Princess longed for
something to love, and the discovery of a legitimate object of family
affection was an event in the weary monotony of her life; and therefore
it was that the hours of the afternoon seemed long while she looked
forth towards Rome, listening to the ceaseless chiming of its bells, and
wondering why no one appeared along the road.

The sun went down, and all the wide plain seemed like the sea at
twilight, lying in rosy and lilac and purple shadowy bands, out of
which rose the old city, solemn and lonely as some enchanted island of
dream-land, with a flush of radiance behind it and a tolling of weird
music filling all the air around. Now they are chanting the Ave Maria in
hundreds of churches, and the Princess worships in distant accord, and
tries to still the anxieties of her heart with many a prayer. Twilight
fades and fades, the Campagna becomes a black sea, and the distant city
looms up like a dark rock against the glimmering sky, and the Princess
goes within and walks restlessly through the wide halls, stopping first
at one open window and then at another to listen. Beneath her feet she
treads a cool mosaic pavement where laughing Cupids are dancing. Above,
from the ceiling, Aurora and the Hours look down in many-colored clouds
of brightness. The sound of the fountains without is so clear in the
intense stillness that the peculiar voice of each one can be told. That
is the swaying noise of the great jet that rises from marble shells and
falls into a wide basin, where silvery swans swim round and round in
enchanted circles; and the other slenderer sound is the smaller jet that
rains down its spray into the violet-borders deep in the shrubbery; and
that other, the shallow babble of the waters that go down the marble
steps to the lake. How dreamlike and plaint