is a Providence purposely for
Hilda, as I remember to have told you long ago. But a great trouble--an
evil deed, let us acknowledge it has spread out its dark branches so
widely, that the shadow falls on innocence as well as guilt. There was
one slight link that connected your sweet Hilda with a crime which it
was her unhappy fortune to witness, but of which I need not say she was
as guiltless as the angels that looked out of heaven, and saw it too.
No matter, now, what the consequence has been. You shall have your lost
Hilda back, and--who knows?--perhaps tenderer than she was."

"But when will she return?" persisted the sculptor; "tell me the when,
and where, and how!"

"A little patience. Do not press me so," said Miriam; and again Kenyon
was struck by the sprite-like, fitful characteristic of her manner, and
a sort of hysteric gayety, which seemed to be a will-o'-the-wisp from
a sorrow stagnant at her heart. "You have more time to spare than I.
First, listen to something that I have to tell. We will talk of Hilda by
and by."

Then Miriam spoke of her own life, and told facts that threw a gleam
of light over many things which had perplexed the sculptor in all his
previous knowledge of her. She described herself as springing from
English parentage, on the mother's side, but with a vein, likewise, of
Jewish blood; yet connected, through her father, with one of those few
princely families of Southern Italy, which still retain great wealth and
influence. And she revealed a name at which her auditor started and grew
pale; for it was one that, only a few years before, had been familiar
to the world in connection with a mysterious and terrible event.
The reader, if he think it worth while to recall some of the strange
incidents which have been talked of, and forgotten, within no long time
past, will remember Miriam's name.

"You shudder at me, I perceive," said Miriam, suddenly interrupting her
narrative.

"No; you were innocent," replied the sculptor. "I shudder at the
fatality that seems to haunt your footsteps, and throws a shadow of
crime about your path, you being guiltless."

"There was such a fatality," said Miriam; "yes; the shadow fell upon
me, innocent, but I went astray in it, and wandered--as Hilda could tell
you--into crime."

She went on to say that, while yet a child, she had lost her English
mother. From a very early period of her life, there had been a contract
of betrothal between herself and a c