to-day."

Miriam put her finger on her lips, and seemed desirous that Kenyon
should know of the presence of a third person. He now saw, indeed, that,
there was some one beside her in the carriage, hitherto concealed by
her attitude; a man, it appeared, with a sallow Italian face, which the
sculptor distinguished but imperfectly, and did not recognize.

"I can tell you nothing," she replied; and leaning towards him, she
whispered,--appearing then more like the Miriam whom he knew than in
what had before passed,--"Only, when the lamp goes out do not despair."

The carriage drove on, leaving Kenyon to muse over this unsatisfactory
interview, which seemed to have served no better purpose than to fill
his mind with more ominous forebodings than before. Why were Donatello
and Miriam in Rome, where both, in all likelihood, might have much to
dread? And why had one and the other addressed him with a question that
seemed prompted by a knowledge of some calamity, either already fallen
on his unconscious head, or impending closely over him?

"I am sluggish," muttered Kenyon, to himself; "a weak, nerveless fool,
devoid of energy and promptitude; or neither Donatello nor Miriam could
have escaped me thus! They are aware of some misfortune that concerns me
deeply. How soon am I to know it too?"

There seemed but a single calamity possible to happen within so narrow
a sphere as that with which the sculptor was connected; and even to that
one mode of evil he could assign no definite shape, but only felt that
it must have some reference to Hilda.

Flinging aside the morbid hesitation, and the dallyings with his own
wishes, which he had permitted to influence his mind throughout the day,
he now hastened to the Via Portoghese. Soon the old palace stood before
him, with its massive tower rising into the clouded night; obscured from
view at its midmost elevation, but revealed again, higher upward, by
the Virgin's lamp that twinkled on the summit. Feeble as it was, in
the broad, surrounding gloom, that little ray made no inconsiderable
illumination among Kenyon's sombre thoughts; for; remembering Miriam's
last words, a fantasy had seized him that he should find the sacred lamp
extinguished.

And even while he stood gazing, as a mariner at the star in which he put
his trust, the light quivered, sank, gleamed up again, and finally went
out, leaving the battlements of Hilda's tower in utter darkness. For the
first time in centuries, the