and had found something unnatural in the daylight ever afterwards.'

'Yet, like Epimenides, he is kind, and wise, and gentle,' answered Ione.

'Oh, happy that he has thy praise! He needs no other virtues to make
him dear to me.'

'His calm, his coldness,' said Ione, evasively pursuing the subject,
'are perhaps but the exhaustion of past sufferings; as yonder mountain
(and she pointed to Vesuvius), which we see dark and tranquil in the
distance, once nursed the fires for ever quenched.'

They both gazed on the mountain as Ione said these words; the rest of
the sky was bathed in rosy and tender hues, but over that grey summit,
rising amidst the woods and vineyards that then clomb half-way up the
ascent, there hung a black and ominous cloud, the single frown of the
landscape. A sudden and unaccountable gloom came over each as they thus
gazed; and in that sympathy which love had already taught them, and
which bade them, in the slightest shadows of emotion, the faintest
presentiment of evil, turn for refuge to each other, their gaze at the
same moment left the mountain, and full of unimaginable tenderness, met.
What need had they of words to say they loved?



Chapter VI

THE FOWLER SNARES AGAIN THE BIRD THAT HAD JUST ESCAPED, AND SETS HIS
NETS FOR A NEW VICTIM.