ory that occurred in your country. There was
a poor girl born and bred a serf to her wealthy lord and master. When
scarcely fifteen years old, she was torn from a state of happy rustic
freedom--the freedom of humility and content--to be one of the courtly
slaves of the Palace. Those who did not laugh at her, scolded her.
One kind word was vouchsafed to her, and that came from the lord's
son. She nursed it and treasured it; till, from long concealing and
restraining her feelings, she at last found that gratitude had changed
into a sincere affection. But what does a man of the world care for
the love of a serf? It does not even flatter his vanity. The young
nobleman did not understand the source of her tears and her grief, and
he made a present of her, as he would have done of some animal, to his
betrothed."

Leon, agitated and somewhat enlightened, would have interrupted her;
but Giovanna said, "Allow me to finish my tale. Providence did not
abandon this poor orphan, but permitted her to rise to distinction by
the talent with which she was endowed by nature. The wretched serf
of Pobereze became a celebrated Italian cantatrice. _Then_ her former
lord meeting her in society, and seeing her admired and courted by all
the world, without knowing who she really was, was afflicted, as if by
the dictates of Heaven, with a love for this same girl,--with a guilty
love"--

And Giovanna rose, as she said this, to remove herself further from
her admirer.

"No, no!" he replied earnestly; "with a pure and holy passion."

"Impossible!" returned Giovanna. "Are you not married?"

Roszynski vehemently tore a letter from his vest, and handed it to
Giovanna. It was sealed with black, for it announced the death of his
wife at the baths. It had only arrived that morning.

"You have lost no time," said the cantatrice, endeavoring to conceal
her feelings under an iron mask of reproach.

There was a pause. Each dared not speak. The Count knew--but without
actually and practically believing what seemed incredible--that
Anielka and Giovanna were the same person--_his slave_. That terrible
relationship checked him. Anielka, too, had played her part to the end
of endurance. The long cherished tenderness, the faithful love of her
life could not longer be wholly mastered. Hitherto they had spoken in
Italian. She now said, in Polish,

"You have a right, my Lord Roszynski, to that poor Anielka who escaped
from the service of your wife in Floren