e mask, and called loudly, but in the infirm voice of a
person affected with inward disease, "Beatrice! Beatrice!"

"Here am I, my father. What would you?" cried a rich and youthful voice
from the window of the opposite house--a voice as rich as a tropical
sunset, and which made Giovanni, though he knew not why, think of deep
hues of purple or crimson and of perfumes heavily delectable. "Are you
in the garden?"

"Yes, Beatrice," answered the gardener, "and I need your help."

Soon there emerged from under a sculptured portal the figure of a young
girl, arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of
the flowers, beautiful as the day, and with a bloom so deep and vivid
that one shade more would have been too much. She looked redundant with
life, health, and energy; all of which attributes were bound down and
compressed, as it were and girdled tensely, in their luxuriance, by her
virgin zone. Yet Giovanni's fancy must have grown morbid while he
looked down into the garden; for the impression which the fair stranger
made upon him was as if here were another flower, the human sister of
those vegetable ones, as beautiful as they, more beautiful than the
richest of them, but still to be touched only with a glove, nor to be
approached without a mask. As Beatrice came down the garden path, it
was observable that she handled and inhaled the odor of several of the
plants which her father had most sedulously avoided.

"Here, Beatrice," said the latter, "see how many needful offices
require to be done to our chief treasure. Yet, shattered as I am, my
life might pay the penalty of approaching it so closely as
circumstances demand. Henceforth, I fear, this plant must be consigned
to your sole charge."

"And gladly will I undertake it," cried again the rich tones of the
young lady, as she bent towards the magnificent plant and opened her
arms as if to embrace it. "Yes, my sister, my splendour, it shall be
Beatrice's task to nurse and serve thee; and thou shalt reward her with
thy kisses and perfumed breath, which to her is as the breath of life."

Then, with all the tenderness in her manner that was so strikingly
expressed in her words, she busied herself with such attentions as the
plant seemed to require; and Giovanni, at his lofty window, rubbed his
eyes and almost doubted whether it were a girl tending her favorite
flower, or one sister performing the duties of affection to another.
The scene soon terminated.