moment I had clambered to the place, and, standing there, I bent forward
to my right, pulled away the tangle of ivy that filled half the niche,
and was peering in.

"What is that?" said a voice I knew, with its silvery echo of the South,
the accursed Neapolitan's.

"It is the owl that builds in the recess, and stirs the ivy," she
replied.

"Haste!" said a third,--"the day breaks."

She was sitting at a low table, writing; Pia, the old nurse, stood
behind her chair; the oil was richly scented that she burned; the
single light illumined only her, and covered with her shadow the low
ceiling,--a shadow that seemed to hang above her like a pall ready to
fall from ghostly fingers and smother her in its folds; the others
lounged about the room and waited on her pen, in gloom they, their faces
gleaming from that dusk demoniacly. It was a concealed room, entered by
secret ways, unknown to others than these.

When she had written, she sealed.

"There is no more to await. Adieu," she said.

"It is some transfer of property, some legal paper, some sale, some
gift," I said to myself, as I watched them take it and depart. Then she
was alone again. I saw her start up, pace the narrow spot,--saw her
stand and pull down the masses, so interspersed with golden light, that
crowned her head, and look at them wonderingly as they overlay her