requent excursions: was said to lead there a free and gay life, very
displeasing to the Signora, whom he left in Verona. She was but little
seen, and faintly remembered as very handsome and proud-looking. Yes,
there were children--a girl, and a boy several years younger than the
girl; but whether she was the child of the Signora by a former marriage,
or whether the Signora was only the child's stepmother, no one could
say. The usual clue, in such doubtful matters obtainable through
servants, was here missing. The Cicognas had only kept two servants, and
both were Austrian subjects, who had long left the country,--their very
names forgotten.

Graham now called to mind the Englishman Selby, for whom Isaura had such
grateful affection, as supplying to her the place of her father. This
must have been the Englishman whom Louise Duval had married after
Cicogna's death. It would be no difficult task, surely, to ascertain
where he had resided. Easy enough to ascertain all that Graham wanted to
know from Isaura herself, if a letter could reach her. But, as he knew
by the journals, Paris was now invested--cut off from all communication
with the world beyond. Too irritable, anxious, and impatient to wait for
the close of the siege, though he never suspected it could last so long
as it did, he hastened to Venice, and there learned through the
British consul that the late Mr. Selby was a learned antiquarian, an
accomplished general scholar, a fanatico in music, a man of gentle
temper though reserved manners; had at one time lived much at Venice:
after his marriage with the Signora Cicogna he had taken up his abode
near Florence. To Florence Graham now went. He found the villa on the
skirts of Fiesole at which Mr. Selby had resided. The peasant who had
officiated as gardener and shareholder in the profits of vines and
figs, was still, with his wife, living on the place. Both man and wife
remembered the Inglese well; spoke of him with great affection, of his
wife with great dislike. They said her manners were very haughty, her
temper very violent; that she led the Inglese a very unhappy life; that
there were a girl and a boy, both hers by a former marriage; but
when closely questioned whether they were sure that the girl was the
Signora's child by the former husband, or whether she was not the child
of that husband by a former wife, they could not tell; they could only
say that both were called by the same name--Cicogna; that the boy w