n stair.
Volktman's abode was in the secondo piano. He descended the stairs with
a step lighter than it had been of late; and sinking into a seat without
the house, seemed silently and gratefully to inhale the soft and purple
air of an Italian sunset.

By and by the sun had entirely vanished: and that most brief but most
delicious twilight, common to the clime, had succeeded. Veil-like and
soft, the mist that floats at that hour between earth and heaven, lent
its transparent shadow to the scene around them: it seemed to tremble as
for a moment, and then was gone. The moon arose, and cast its light over
Volktman's earnest countenance,--over the rich bloom and watchful eye
of Lucilla,--over the contemplative brow and motionless figure of
Godolphin. It was a group of indefinable interest: the Earth was so
still, that the visionary might well have fancied it had hushed itself,
to drink within its quiet heart the voices of that Heaven in whose
oracles he believed. Not one of the group spoke,--the astrologer's mind
and gaze were riveted above; and neither of his companions wished to
break the meditations of the old and dreaming man.

Godolphin, with folded arms and downcast eyes, was pursuing his own
thoughts; and Lucilla, to whom Godolphin's presence was a subtle and
subduing intoxication, looked indeed upward to the soft and tender
heavens, but with the soul of the loving daughter of earth.

Slowly, nor marked by his companions, the gaze of the mystic deepened
and deepened in its fixedness.

The minutes went on; and the evening waned, till a chill breeze,
floating down from the Latian Hills, recalled Lucilla's attention to
her father. She covered him tenderly with her own mantle, and whispered
gently in his ear her admonition to shun the coldness of the coming
night. He did not answer; and on raising her voice a little higher, with
the same result, she looked appealingly to Godolphin. He laid his hand
on Volktman's shoulder; and, bending forward to address him,--was
struck dumb by the glazed and fixed expression of the mystic's eyes. The
certainty flashed across him; he hastily felt Volktman's pulse--it
was still. There was no doubt left on his mind; and yet the daughter,
looking at him all the while, did not even dream of this sudden and
awful stroke. In silence, and unconsciously, the strange and solitary
spirit of the mystic had passed from its home--in what exact instant of
time, or by what last contest of nature, w