palazzo; and ten minutes after his departure the vetturino bore her,
delighted but trembling, on the same road.

The Italians are ordinarily good-natured, especially when they are paid
for it; and courteous to females, especially if they have any suspicion
of the influence of the belle passion. The vetturino's foresight had
supplied the deficiencies of her inexperience: he had reminded her of
the necessity of procuring her passport; and he undertook that all other
difficulties should solely devolve on him. And thus Lucilla was now
under the same roof with one for whom, indeed, she was unaware of the
sacrifice she made, but whom, despite of all that clouded and separated
their after-lot, she loved to the last, with a love as reckless and
strong as then--a love passing the love of woman, and defying the common
ordinances of time.

* * * * * *
* * * * * *
* * * * * *

On the blue waters that break with a deep and far voice along the rocks
of that delicious shore, above which the mountain that rises behind
Terracina scatters to the air the odours of the citron and the
orange--on that sounding and immemorial sea the stars, like the hopes of
a brighter world upon the darkness and unrest of life, shone down with
a solemn but tender light. On that shore stood Lucilla and he--the
wandering stranger--in whom she had hoarded the peace and the hopes
of earth. Hers was the first and purple flush of the love which has
attained its object; that sweet and quiet fulness of content--that
heavenly, all-subduing and subdued delight, with which the heart
slumbers in the excess of its own rapture. Care--the forethought of
change--even the shadowy and vague mournfulness of passion--are felt not
in those voluptuous but tranquil moments. Like the waters that rolled,
deep and eloquent, before her, every feeling within was but the mirror
of an all-gentle and cloudless heaven. Her head half-declined upon the
breast of her young lover, she caught the beating of his heart, and in
it heard all the sounds of what was now become to her the world.

And still and solitary deepened around them the mystic and lovely night.
How divine was that sense and consciousness of solitude! how, as it
thrilled within them, they clung closer to each other! Theirs as yet was
that blissful and unsated time when the touch of their hands, clasped
together, was in itself a happiness of emotion too deep for words. And
ever, as hi