But the delusion was only momentary. The brigantine turned in its course,
and, gliding into the part of the Cove where the curvature of the shores
offered most protection from the winds and waves, and perhaps from curious
eyes, its motion ceased. A heavy plunge in the water was audible even at
the villa, and Alida then knew that an anchor had fallen into the bay.

Although the coast of North America offered little to invite lawless
depredation, and it was in general believed to be so safe, yet the
possibility that cupidity might be invited by the retired situation of her
uncle's villa, did not fail to suggest itself to the mind of the young
heiress. Both she and her guardian were reputed to be wealthy; and
disappointment, on the open sea, might drive desperate men to the
commission of crimes that in more prosperous moments would not suggest
themselves. The freebooters were said to have formerly visited the coast
of the neighboring island, and men were just then commencing those
excavations for hidden treasures and secreted booty, which have been, at
distant intervals, continued to our own time.

There are situations in which the mind insensibly gives credit to
impressions, that the reason in common disapproves. The present was one in
which Alide de Barberie, though of a resolute and even a masculine
understanding, felt disposed to believe there might be truth in those
tales, that she had hitherto heard, only to deride. Still keeping her eye
on the Motionless vessel, she drew back into her window and wrapped the
curtain round her form, undecided whether to alarm the family or not, and
acting under a vague impression that, though so distant, her person might
be seen. She was hardly thus secreted, before the shrubbery was violently
agitated, a footstep was heard in the lawn beneath her window, and then
one leaped so lightly into the balcony, and from the balcony into the
centre of the room, that the passage of the figure seemed like the
flitting of some creature of supernatural attributes.

Chapter IX.

"Why look you, how you stare!
I would be friends with you, and have your love."

Shylock.

The first impulse of Alida, at this second invasion of her pavilion, was
certainly to flee. But timidity was not her weakness, and as natural
firmness gave her time to examine the person of the individual who had so
unceremoniously entered, curiosity aided in inducing her to remain.
Perhaps a vague,