he drawing-room, an apartment never unshrouded save on the
most ceremonious occasions. As to Donna Laura, she had undergone the
same process of renovation, and with more striking results. It seemed to
Odo, when she met him sparkling under her rouge and powder, as though
some withered flower had been dipped in water, regaining for the moment
a languid semblance of its freshness. Her eyes shone, her hand trembled
under his lips, and the diamonds rose and fell on her eager bosom.

"You are late!" she tenderly reproached him; and before he had time to
reply, the double doors were thrown open, and the major-domo announced
in an awed voice: "His excellency Count Lelio Trescorre."

Odo turned with a start. To his mind, already crowded with a confusion
of thoughts, the name summoned a throng of memories. He saw again his
mother's apartments at Pianura, and the handsome youth with lace ruffles
and a clouded amber cane, who came and went among her other visitors
with an air of such superiority, and who rode beside the
travelling-carriage on the first stage of their journey to Donnaz. To
that handsome youth the gentleman just announced bore the likeness of
the finished portrait to the sketch. He was a man of about
two-and-thirty, of the middle height, with a delicate dark face and an
air of arrogance not unbecomingly allied to an insinuating courtesy of
address. His dress of sombre velvet, with a star on the breast, and a
profusion of the finest lace, suggested the desire to add dignity and
weight to his appearance without renouncing the softer ambitions of his
age.

He received with a smile Donna Laura's agitated phrases of welcome. "I
come," said he kissing her hand, "in my private character, not as the
Envoy of Pianura, but as the friend and servant of the Countess Valdu;
and I trust," he added turning to Odo, "of the Cavaliere Valsecca also."

Odo bowed in silence.

"You may have heard," Trescorre continued, addressing him in the same
engaging tone, "that I am come to Turin on a mission from his Highness
to the court of Savoy: a trifling matter of boundary-lines and customs,
which I undertook at the Duke's desire, the more readily, it must be
owned, since it gave me the opportunity to renew my acquaintance with
friends whom absence has not taught me to forget." He smiled again at
Donna Laura, who blushed like a girl.

The curiosity which Trescorre's words excited was lost to Odo in the
painful impression produced by his