tel at the western end of
Naples were opened, and a young girl stepped out on to the high balcony,
a light shawl thrown over her head and shoulders. It was a beautiful
night; the air sweet and still; the moonlight shining over the scarcely
stirring waters of the bay. Before her rose the vast bulk of the
Castello dell' Ovo, a huge mass of black shadow against the silvery sea
and the lambent sky: then far away throbbed the dull orange lights of
the city; and beyond these, again, Vesuvius towered into the clear
darkness, with a line of sharp, intense crimson marking its summit.
Through the perfect silence she could hear the sound of the oars of a
boat, itself unseen; and over the whispering waters came some faint and
distant refrain, "_Addio! addio!_" At length even these sounds ceased,
and she was alone in the still, murmuring beautiful night.

She looked across to the great city. Who were her unknown friends there?
What mighty power was she about to invoke on the morrow? There was no
need for her to consult the card that Calabressa had given her; again
and again, in the night-time, when her mother lay asleep, she had
studied it, and wondered whether it would prove the talisman the giver
had called it. She looked at this great city beside the sea, and only
knew that it was beautiful in the moonlight; she had no fear of anything
that it contained. And then she thought of another city, far away in the
colder north, and she wondered if a certain window were open there,
overlooking the river and the gas-lamp and the bridges, and whether
there was one there thinking of her. Could not the night-wind carry the
speech and desire of her heart?--"Good-night, good-night.... Love knows
no fear.... Not yet is our life forever broken for us."

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE BEECHES.

On the same night Lord Evelyn was in Brand's rooms, arguing,
expostulating, entreating, all to no purpose. He was astounded at the
calmness with which this man appeared to accept the terrible task
imposed on him, and at the stoical indifference with which he looked
forward to the almost certain sacrifice of his own life.

"You have become a fanatic of fanatics!" he exclaimed, indignantly.

George Brand was staring out of the windows into the dark night,
somewhat absently.

"I suppose," he answered, "all the great things that have been done in
the world have been founded in fanaticism. All that I can hope for now
is that this particular act of the Counc