ewell to any one, without even casting a glance at
the objects among which she had lived and suffered, she descended the
staircase and gave the coachman the name of the villa, adding "Drive
quickly; I am late now."

The Lake di Porto is only, as its name indicates, the port of the
ancient Tiber. The road which leads from Transtevere runs along the
river, which rolls through a plain strewn with ruins and indented with
barren hills, its brackish water discolored from the sand and mud of the
Apennines.

Here groups of eucalyptus, there groups of pine parasols above some
ruined walls, were all the vegetation which met Alba Steno's eye. But
the scene accorded so well with the moral devastation she bore within
her that the barrenness around her in her last walk was pleasant to her.

The feeling that she was nearing eternal peace, final sleep in which she
should suffer no more, augmented when she alighted from the carriage,
and, having passed the garden of Villa Torlonia, she found herself
facing the small lake, so grandiose in its smallness by the wildness of
its surroundings, and motionless, surprised in even that supreme moment
by the magic of that hidden sight, she paused amid the reeds with their
red tufts to look at that pond which was to become her tomb, and she
murmured:

"How beautiful it is!"

There was in the humid atmosphere which gradually penetrated her a charm
of mortal rest, to which she abandoned herself dreamily, almost with
physical voluptuousness, drinking into her being the feverish fumes of
that place--one of the most fatal at that season and at that hour of all
that dangerous coast--until she shuddered in her light summer gown.
Her shoulders contracted, her teeth chattered, and that feeling of
discomfort was to her as a signal for action. She took another allee of
rose-bushes in flower to reach a point on the bank barren of vegetation,
where was outlined the form of a boat. She soon detached it, and,
managing the heavy oars with her delicate hands, she advanced toward the
middle of the lake.

When she was in the spot which she thought the deepest and the most
suitable for her design, she ceased rowing. Then, by a delicate care,
which made her smile herself, so much did it betray instinctive and
childish order at such a solemn moment, she put her hat, her umbrella
and her gloves on one of the transversal boards of the boat. She had
made effort to move the heavy oars, so that she was perspiring. A s