Part 144 (2/2)

”No, it is not enough,” shouted Harley, as he continued to read the letters with his rapid sparkling eyes. ”More still! O villain, doubly d.a.m.ned! Here, after our friend's flight, here is Peschiera's avowal of guilty pa.s.sion; here, he swears that he had intrigued to ruin his benefactor, in order to pollute the home that had sheltered him. Ah, see how she answers! thank Heaven her own eyes were opened at last, and she scorned him before she died! She was innocent! I said so. Violante's mother was pure. Poor lady, this moves me! Has your emperor the heart of a man?”

”I know enough of our emperor,” answered the prince, warmly, ”to know that, the moment these papers reach him, Peschiera is ruined, and your friend is restored to his honours. You will live to see the daughter, to whom you would have given a child's place at your hearth, the wealthiest heiress of Italy,--the bride of some n.o.ble lover, with rank only below the supremacy of kings!”

”Ah,” said Harley, in a sharp accent, and turning very pale,--”ah, I shall not see her that! I shall never visit Italy again!--never see her more,--never, after she has once quitted this climate of cold iron cares and formal duties! never, never!” He turned his head for a moment, and then came with quick step to Leonard. ”But you, O happy poet! No Ideal can ever be lost to you. You are independent of real life. Would that I were a poet!” He smiled sadly.

”You would not say so, perhaps, my dear Lord,” answered Leonard, with equal sadness, ”if you knew how little what you call 'the Ideal'

replaces to a poet the loss of one affection in the genial human world.

Independent of real life! Alas! no. And I have here the confessions of a true poet-soul, which I will entreat you to read at leisure; and when you have read, say if you would still be a poet!”

He took forth Nora's ma.n.u.scripts as he spoke.

”Place them yonder, in my escritoire, Leonard; I will read them later.”

”Do so, and with heed; for to me there is much here that involves my own life,--much that is still a mystery, and which I think you can unravel!”

”I!” exclaimed Harley; and he was moving towards the escritoire, in a drawer of which Leonard had carefully deposited the papers, when once more, but this time violently, the door was thrown open, and Giacomo rushed into the room, accompanied by Lady Lansmere.

”Oh, my Lord, my Lord!” cried Giacomo, in Italian, ”the signorina! the signorina! Violante!”

”What of her? Mother, Mother! what of her? Speak, speak!”

”She has gone,--left our house!”

”Left! No, no!” cried Giacomo. ”She must have been deceived or forced away. The count! the count! Oh, my good Lord, save her, as you once saved her father!”

”Hold!” cried Harley. ”Give me your arm, Mother. A second such blow in life is beyond the strength of man,--at least it is beyond mine. So, so!

I am better now! Thank you, Mother. Stand back, all of you! give me air. So the count has triumphed, and Violante has fled with him! Explain all,--I can bear it!”

BOOK TWELFTH.

INITIAL CHAPTER.

WHEREIN THE CAXTON FAMILY REAPPEAR.

”Again,” quoth my father,--”again behold us! We who greeted the commencement of your narrative, who absented ourselves in the midcourse when we could but obstruct the current of events, and jostle personages more important,--we now gather round the close. Still, as the chorus to the drama, we circle round the altar with the solemn but dubious chant which prepares the audience for the completion of the appointed destinies; though still, ourselves, unaware how the skein is to be unravelled, and where the shears are to descend.”

So there they stood, the Family of Caxton,--all grouping round me, all eager officiously to question, some over-anxious prematurely to criticise.

”Violante can't have voluntarily gone off with that horrid count,” said my mother; ”but perhaps she was deceived, like Eugenia by Mr. Bellamy, in the novel of 'CAMILLA'.”

”Ha!” said my father, ”and in that case it is time yet to steal a hint from Clarissa Harlowe, and make Violante die less of a broken heart than a sullied honour. She is one of those girls who ought to be killed! All things about her forebode an early tomb!”

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