CHAPTER XVIII.


It wanted several minutes of midnight, and Glyndon repaired to the
appointed spot. The mysterious empire which Zicci had acquired over him
was still more solemnly confirmed by the events of the last few hours;
the sudden fate of the Prince, so deliberately foreshadowed, and yet so
seemingly accidental--brought out by causes the most commonplace, and
yet associated with words the most prophetic,--impressed him with the
deepest sentiments of admiration and awe. It was as if this dark and
wondrous being would convert the most ordinary events and the meanest
instruments into the agencies of his inscrutable will; yet, if so, why
have permitted the capture of Isabel? Why not have prevented the crime
rather than punished the criminal? And did Zicci really feel love for
Isabel? Love, and yet offer to resign her to himself,--to a rival whom
his arts could not fail to baffle? He no longer reverted to the belief
that Zicci or Isabel had sought to dupe him into marriage. His fear and
reverence for the former now forbade the notion of so poor an imposture.
Did he any longer love Isabel himself? No. When, that morning, he
heard of her danger, he had, it is true, returned to the sympathies and
the fears of affection; but with the death of the Prince her image faded
again from his heart, and he felt no jealous pang at the thought that
she had been saved by Zicci,--that at that moment she was perhaps
beneath his roof. Whoever has, in the course of his life, indulged the
absorbing passion of the gamester, will remember bow all other pursuits
and objects vanished from his mind, how solely he was wrapped in the one
wild delusion; with what a sceptre of magic power the despot demon ruled
every feeling and every thought. Far more intense than the passion of
the gamester was the frantic yet sublime desire that mastered the breast