f these last, they enjoyed most the society
of Mrs. Blanchard and her son, Otho, who were at the same hotel with
them.

The opera, too, was a new delight to Isabella, and even Celia was
excited by it.

"It is a little too absurd, to see the dying scene of Romeo and Juliet
sung out in an opera!" remarked Lawrence Egerton, one morning; "all
the music of the spheres could not have made that scene, last night,
otherwise than supremely ridiculous."

"I am glad you did not sit by us, then," replied Celia; "Isabella and I
were crying."

"I dare say," said Lawrence. "I should be afraid to take you to see a
tragedy well acted. You would both be in hysterics before the killing
was over."

"I should be really afraid," said Celia, "to see Romeo and Juliet finely
performed. It would be too sad."

"It would be much better to end it up comfortably," said Lawrence. "Why
should not Juliet marry her Romeo in peace?"

"It would be impossible!" exclaimed Isabella,--"impossible to bring
together two such hostile families! Of course the result must be a
tragedy."

"In romances," answered Lawrence, "that may be necessary; but not in
real life."

"Why not in real life?" asked Isabella. "When two thunder-clouds meet,
there must be an explosion."

"But we don't have such hostile families arrayed against each other
now-a-days," said Lawrence. "The Bianchi and the Neri have died out;
unless the feud lives between the whites and the blacks of the present
day."

"Are you sure that it has died out everywhere?" asked Isabella.

"Certainly not," said Otho Blanchard; "my mother, Bianca Bianco,
inherits her name from a long line of ancestry, and with it come its
hatreds as well as its loves."

"You speak like an Italian or Spaniard," said Lawrence. "We are
cold-blooded Yankees, and in our slow veins such passions do die out. I
should have taken you for an American from your name."

"It is our name Americanized; we have made Americans of ourselves, and
the Bianchi have become the Blanchards."

"The romance of the family, then," persisted Lawrence, "must needs
become Americanized too. If you were to meet with a lovely young lady of
the enemy's race, I think you would be willing to bury your sword in the
sheath for her sake."

"I hope I should not forget the honor of my family," said Otho. "I
certainly never could, as long as my mother lives; her feelings on the
subject are stronger even than mine."

"I cannot imagine the possibilit