AGNES OF SORRENTO.


CHAPTER X.

THE INTERVIEW.


The dreams of Agnes, on the night after her conversation with the monk
and her singular momentary interview with the cavalier, were a strange
mixture of images, indicating the peculiarities of her education and
habits of daily thought.

She dreamed that she was sitting alone in the moonlight, and heard some
one rustling in the distant foliage of the orange-groves, and from them
came a young man dressed in white of a dazzling clearness like sunlight;
large pearly wings fell from his shoulders and seemed to shimmer with
a phosphoric radiance; his forehead was broad and grave, and above it
floated a thin, tremulous tongue of flame; his eyes had that deep,
mysterious gravity which is so well expressed in all the Florentine
paintings of celestial beings: and yet, singularly enough, this
white-robed, glorified form seemed to have the features and lineaments
of the mysterious cavalier of the evening before,--the same deep,
mournful, dark eyes, only that in them the light of earthly pride had
given place to the calm, strong gravity of an assured peace,--the same
broad forehead,--the same delicately chiselled features, but elevated