casement. Over the old fruit-trees and hanging vines fell the moonshine;
and in the centre of the green, but half-neglected sward, the waters of
a small and circular fountain, whose perfect proportions spoke of days
long past, played and sparkled in the starlight. The scene was still
and beautiful; but neither of its stillness nor its beauty thought Nina:
towards one, the gloomiest and most rugged, spot in the whole garden,
turned her gaze; there, the trees stood densely massed together, and
shut from view the low but heavy wall which encircled the mansion of
Raselli. The boughs on those trees stirred gently, but Nina saw them
wave; and now from the copse emerged, slowly and cautiously, a solitary
figure, whose shadow threw itself, long and dark, over the sward. It
approached the window, and a low voice breathed Nina's name.

"Quick, Lucia!" cried she, breathlessly, turning to her handmaid:
"quick! the rope-ladder! it is he! he is come! How slow you are! haste,
girl,--he may be discovered! There,--O joy,--O joy!--My lover! my hero!
my Rienzi!"

"It is you!" said Rienzi, as, now entering the chamber, he wound his
arms around her half-averted form, "and what is night to others is day
to me!"

The first sweet moments of welcome were over; and Rienzi was seated at
the feet of his mistress: his head rested on her knees--his face looking
up to hers--their hands clasped each in each.

"And for me thou bravest these dangers!" said the lover; "the shame of
discovery, the wrath of thy parents!"

"But what are my perils to thine? Oh, Heaven! if my father found thee
here thou wouldst die!"

"He would think it then so great a humiliation, that thou, beautiful
Nina, who mightst match with the haughtiest names of Rome, shouldst
waste thy love on a plebeian--even though the grandson of an emperor!"

The proud heart of Nina could sympathize well with the wounded pride of
her lover: she detected the soreness which lurked beneath his answer,
carelessly as it was uttered.

"Hast thou not told me," she said, "of that great Marius, who was no
noble, but from whom the loftiest Colonna would rejoice to claim his
descent? and do I not know in thee one who shall yet eclipse the power
of Marius, unsullied by his vices?"

"Delicious flattery! sweet prophet!" said Rienzi, with a melancholy
smile; "never were thy supporting promises of the future more welcome to
me than now; for to thee I will say what I would utter to none else--my
sou