that she possessed
beauty of a rich and rare type. She had the delicate, aquiline nose,
the dark, lustrous eyes and hair, the finely arched eyebrows of the
Hebrew woman. But she was no Jewess.

Mrs. Lansdowne could number in her ancestry men who had been notable
leaders in the Revolutionary war with England, and, later in our
history, others, who were remarkable for patriotism, nobility of
character, intellectual ability, and high moral and religious culture.

Early in life, she had been united to Mr. Lansdowne, a gentleman
moving in the same rank of society with herself. His health obliged
him to give up the professional life he anticipated, and he had become
a prosperous and enterprising merchant in his native city. They had an
only child, a son eighteen years old, who in the progress of his
collegiate course had just entered the senior year.

Edward Somers was Mrs. Lansdowne's only brother, her mother having
died a week after his birth. She was eleven years of age at the time,
and from that early period had watched over and loved him tenderly. He
had grown up handsome and accomplished, fascinating in manners and
most affectionate toward herself. She had learned that he had been
engaged in what appeared, upon the face of it, a dishonorable affair,
and her sensitive nature had been greatly shocked.

Two years before, Mr. Lansdowne had taken him as a junior partner in
his business. He had since been a member of his sister's family.

A young foreigner had come to reside in the city, professing himself a
member of a noble Italian family. Giuseppe Rossini was poet, orator,
and musician. As poet and orator he was pleasing and graceful; as a
musician he excelled. He was a brilliant and not obtrusive
conversationalist. His enthusiastic expressions of admiration for our
free institutions won him favor with all classes. In the fashionable
circle he soon became a pet.

Mrs. Lansdowne had from the first distrusted him. There was no
tangible foundation for her suspicions, but she had not been able to
overcome a certain instinct that warned her from his presence. She
watched, with misgivings of heart, her brother's growing familiarity
with the Italian. A facility of temper, his characteristic from
boyhood, made her fear that he might not be able to withstand the
soft, insinuating voice that veils guilty designs by winning
sophistics and appeals to sympathy and friendship. And so it proved.

One day, in extreme agitation, R