ad perhaps only
served to rivet the fascinated chains in which he bound her heart and
senses, but which now, as Glyndon's awful narrative filled her
with contagious dread, half unbound the very spells they had woven
before,--Viola started up in fear, not for HERSELF, and clasped her
child in her arms!

"Unhappiest one!" cried Glyndon, shuddering, "hast thou indeed given
birth to a victim thou canst not save? Refuse it sustenance,--let it
look to thee in vain for food! In the grave, at least, there are repose
and peace!"

Then there came back to Viola's mind the remembrance of Zanoni's
night-long watches by that cradle, and the fear which even then had
crept over her as she heard his murmured half-chanted words. And as
the child looked at her with its clear, steadfast eye, in the strange
intelligence of that look there was something that only confirmed her
awe. So there both Mother and Forewarner stood in silence,--the sun
smiling upon them through the casement, and dark by the cradle, though
they saw it not, sat the motionless, veiled Thing!

But by degrees better and juster and more grateful memories of the past
returned to the young mother. The features of the infant, as she gazed,
took the aspect of the absent father. A voice seemed to break from those
rosy lips, and say, mournfully, "I speak to thee in thy child. In return
for all my love for thee and thine, dost thou distrust me, at the first
sentence of a maniac who accuses?"

Her breast heaved, her stature rose, her eyes shone with a serene and
holy light.

"Go, poor victim of thine own delusions," she said to Glyndon; "I
would not believe mine own senses, if they accused ITS father! And
what knowest thou of Zanoni? What relation have Mejnour and the grisly
spectres he invoked, with the radiant image with which thou wouldst
connect them?"

"Thou wilt learn too soon," replied Glyndon, gloomily. "And the very
phantom that haunts me, whispers, with its bloodless lips, that its
horrors await both thine and thee! I take not thy decision yet; before I
leave Venice we shall meet again."

He said, and departed.

CHAPTER 6.VI.

Quel est l'egarement ou ton ame se livre?
La Harpe, "Le Comte de Warwick," Act 4, sc. 4.

(To what delusion does thy soul abandon itself?)

Alas, Zanoni! the aspirer, the dark, bright one!--didst thou think that
the bond between the survivor of ages and the daughter of a day could
endure? Didst thou not foresee th