cian hymns to the loveliest lady in Pompeii.'

The girl sprang from his clasp; a change came over her whole face,
bright the instant before; she sighed heavily, and then once more taking
his hand, she said:

'I thought I was to go to your house?'

'And so thou shalt for the present; come, we lose time.'

Chapter IV

THE RIVAL OF GLAUCUS PRESSES ONWARD IN THE RACE.

IONE was one of those brilliant characters which, but once or twice,
flash across our career. She united in the highest perfection the
rarest of earthly gifts--Genius and Beauty. No one ever possessed
superior intellectual qualities without knowing them--the alliteration
of modesty and merit is pretty enough, but where merit is great, the
veil of that modesty you admire never disguises its extent from its
possessor. It is the proud consciousness of certain qualities that it
cannot reveal to the everyday world, that gives to genius that shy, and
reserved, and troubled air, which puzzles and flatters you when you
encounter it.

Ione, then, knew her genius; but, with that charming versatility that
belongs of right to women, she had the faculty so few of a kindred
genius in the less malleable sex can claim--the faculty to bend and
model her graceful intellect to all whom it encountered. The sparkling
fountain threw its waters alike upon the strand, the cavern, and the
flowers; it refreshed, it smiled, it dazzled everywhere. That pride,
which is the necessary result of superiority, she wore easily--in her
breast it concentred itself in independence. She pursued thus her own
bright and solitary path. She asked no aged matron to direct and guide
her--she walked alone by the torch of her own unflickering purity. She
obeyed no tyrannical and absolute custom. She moulded custom to her own
will, but this so delicately and with so feminine a grace, so perfect an
exemption from error, that you could not say she outraged custom but
commanded it. The wealth of her graces was inexhaustible--she
beautified the commonest action; a word, a look from her, seemed magic.
Love her, and you entered into a new world, you passed from this trite
and commonplace earth. You were in a land in which your eyes saw
everything through an enchanted medium. In her presence you felt as if
listening to exquisite music; you were steeped in that sentiment which
has so little of earth in it, and which music so well inspires--that
intoxication which refines and exalts, which se