upon her in my own hall, and shook my head when she asked me with a quick, pleading look, to come with them to this very spot?” It seemed days, since that time. The rush of these new thoughts, the final making up of this slowly-maturing purpose, the sudden allowing of his heart to regard her as a woman to be won, had carried the past away as by the sweep of a mountain torrent. He could not believe he had ever known a moment of hesitancy, ever looked at her as a father, ever bid her go on her way and leave the prisoner to his fate. He must always have felt like this; such momentum could not have been gathered in an hour; she must know that he loved her wildly, deeply, sacredly, wholly, with the fibre of his mind, his body and his soul; that to call her his in life and in death, was the one demanding passion of his existence, making the past a dream, and the future—ah, he dared not question that! He must behold her face before he could even speculate upon the realities lying behind fate’s down-drawn curtain.
Meanwhile fair faces and lovely forms flitted before him, carrying his glance along in their train, but only because youth was a symbol of Paula. If these fresh young girls could smile and look back upon him, with that lingering glance which his presence ever invoked, why not she who was not only sweet, tender, and lovely, but gifted with a nature that responded to the deep things of life, and the stern passions of potent humanity. Could a merry laugh lure her while he stood by? Was the sunshine the natural atmosphere of this flower, that had bloomed under his eye so sweetly and shed out its innocent fragrance, at the approach of his solemn-pacing foot? He began to mirror before his mind’s eye the startled look of happy wonder with which she would greet his impassioned glance, when released from whatever duties might be now pressing upon her; she wandered into these rooms, to find him awaiting her, when suddenly there was a stir in the throng, a pleased and excited rush, and the large curtain which he had vaguely noticed hanging at one end of the room, uplifted and—was it Paula? this coy, brilliant, saucy-eyed Florentine maiden, stepping out from a bower of greenery, with