affection. Hold yourself queen within these walls more absolutely than
you have ever enacted that part on the stage. To-night, farewell! May
your sleep becalm, and your dreams propitious to my hopes!"

With these words he retired, and in a few moments Isabel was surrounded
by officious attendants, whom she at length, with some difficulty,
dismissed; and refusing to retire to rest, she spent the night in
examining the chamber, which she found was secured, and in thoughts of
Zicci, in whose power she felt an almost preternatural confidence.

Meanwhile the Prince descended the stairs, and sought the room into
which the stranger had been shown.

He found him wrapped from head to foot in a long robe,--half gown, half
mantle,--such as was sometimes worn by ecclesiastics. The face of this
stranger was remarkable; so sunburnt and swarthy were his hues that he
must, apparently, have derived his origin amongst the races of the
farthest East. His--forehead was lofty, and his eyes so penetrating,
yet so calm, in their gaze that the Prince shrank from them as we shrink
from a questioner who is drawing forth the guiltiest secrets of our
hearts.

"What would you with me?" asked the Prince, motioning his visitor to a
seat.

"Prince di --," said the stranger, in a voice deep and sweet, but
foreign in its accent, "son of the most energetic and masculine race
that ever applied godlike genius to the service of the Human Will, with
its winding wickedness and its stubborn grandeur; descendant of the
great Visconti, in whose chronicles lies the History of Italy in her