er long mantle.
The streets at Rome are not thronged as with us; nor does there exist,
in a city consecrated by so many sublime objects, that restless and
vulgar curiosity which torments the English public. Each lives in
himself, not in his neighbour. The moral air of Rome is Indifference.

Lucilla, therefore, hurried along unmolested and unobserved, until
at length her feet failed her, and she sank exhausted, but still
unconscious of her movements and of all around, upon one of the
scattered fragments of ancient pride that at every turn are visible in
the streets of Rome. The place was quiet and solitary, and darkened by
the shadows of a palace that reared itself close beside. She sat down;
and shrouding her face as it drooped over her breast, endeavoured to
collect her thoughts. Presently the sound of a guitar was heard; and
along the street came a little group of the itinerant musicians who
invest modern Italy with its yet living air of poetry: the reality is
gone, but the spirit lingers. They stopped opposite a small house; and
Lucilla, looking up, saw the figure of a young girl placing a light at
the window as a signal well known, and then she glided away. Meanwhile,
the lover (who had accompanied the musicians, and seemed in no very
elevated rank of life) stood bare-headed beneath; and in his upward
look there was a devotion, a fondness, a respect, that brought back to
Lucilla all the unsparing bitterness of contrast and recollection. And
now the serenade began. The air was inexpressibly soft and touching,
and the words were steeped in that vague melancholy which is inseparable
from the tenderness, if not from the passion, of love. Lucilla listened
involuntarily, and the charm slowly wrought its effect. The hardness and
confusion of her mind melted gradually away, and as the song ended she
turned aside and burst into tears. "Happy, happy girl!" she murmured;
"she is loved!"

Here let us drop the curtain upon Lucilla. Often, O Reader! shalt thou
recall this picture; often shalt thou see her before thee--alone and
broken-hearted--weeping in the twilight streets of Rome!

CHAPTER XLIII.

LOVE STRONG AS DEATH, AND NOT LESS BITTER.

When Godolphin returned home the door was open, as Lucilla had left
it, and he went at once into his apartment. He hastened to the table on
which he had left, with the negligence arising from the emotions of the
moment, the letter to Constance,--the paper on which Lucilla bad w