On the evening of the next day, Oswald was introduced to Corinne at her
own house by the Count d'Erfeuil, a Frenchman who had been his companion
in the journey into Italy. The Prince Castel Forte and all the other
guests paid her the most assiduous attention; Oswald gazed on her for
the most part in silence, wondering at the mingled sweetness and
vivacity of her conversation, realising that she possessed a grace that
he had never met before. Although she invited him to meet her again, he
did not go on the next evening; he was restrained by a kind of terror at
the feeling which excited him.

"Oh, my father," he sighed, "had you known Corinne, what would you have
thought of her?"

For the mourning that Oswald wore was for his father. A terrible event
in Oswald's life had drawn the two apart; his father had died ere he
could return to ask forgiveness. But his father had blessed him on his
deathbed, and it was Oswald's whole desire in the grief that preyed upon
him, to live in all things as his dead parent would have wished him to
live.

The attraction of Corinne's society soon drew him back to her presence,
and during the next fortnight she, at her own proposal, guided him in
his exploration of Rome. Together they wandered through the ruins, the
churches, the art galleries. Their opinions were seldom in agreement;
Corinne was characteristically and brightly Italian in her views, Oswald
characteristically and sombrely English. But each was conscious, none
the less, of keen intellectual sympathy with the other; and Oswald,
without speaking of the love of which he began to be conscious, made her
sensible of it every hour in the day. His proud retiring attachment shed
a new interest over her life. Accustomed as she was to the lively and