l and girlish curiosity examined the rich jewel which had inclosed
it. At last, seeming to collect her thoughts, she folded the paper and
replaced it in its sparkling casket, and, unlocking the door of the
shrine, laid the gem with its inclosure beneath the lily-spray, as
another offering to the Madonna. "Dear Mother," she said, "if indeed it
be so, may he rise from loving me to loving thee and thy dear Son, who
is Lord of all! Amen!" Thus praying, she locked the door and turned
thoughtfully to her repose, leaving the monk pacing up and down in the
moonlit garden.

Meanwhile the Cavalier was standing on the velvet mossy bridge which
spanned the stream at the bottom of the gorge, watching the play of
moonbeams on layer after layer of tremulous silver foliage in the clefts
of the black, rocky walls on either side. The moon rode so high in the
deep violet-colored sky, that her beams came down almost vertically,
making green and translucent the leaves through which they passed,
and throwing strongly marked shadows here and there on the
flower-embroidered moss of the old bridge. There was that solemn,
plaintive stillness in the air which makes the least sound--the hum
of an insect's wing, the cracking of a twig, the patter of falling
water--so distinct and impressive.

It needs not to be explained how the Cavalier, following the steps of
Agnes and her grandmother at a distance, had threaded the path by which
they ascended to their little sheltered nook,--how he had lingered
within hearing of Agnes's voice, and, moving among the surrounding rocks
and trees, and drawing nearer and nearer as evening shadows drew on, had
listened to the conversation, hoping that some unexpected chance might
gain him a moment's speech with his enchantress.

The reader will have gathered from the preceding chapter that the
conception which Agnes had formed as to the real position of her admirer
from the reports of Giulietta was false, and that in reality he was
not Lord Adrian, the brother of the King, but an outcast and landless
representative of one branch of an ancient and noble Roman family, whose
estates had been confiscated and whose relations had been murdered, to
satisfy the boundless rapacity of Caesar Borgia, the infamous favorite
of the notorious Alexander VI.

The natural temperament of Agostino Sarelli had been rather that of the
poet and artist than of the warrior. In the beautiful gardens of his
ancestral home it had been his de