daughter's solicitude, the spectre in human attire, who had driven us
from the music-room; as she led him, she watched with some anxiety the
slow movement of his feeble feet. They walked painfully across the
boudoir to a door hidden in the hangings. Marianina knocked softly.
Instantly a tall, thin man, a sort of familiar spirit, appeared as if
by magic. Before entrusting the old man to this mysterious guardian,
the lovely child, with deep veneration, kissed the ambulatory corpse,
and her chaste caress was not without a touch of that graceful
playfulness, the secret of which only a few privileged women possess.

"_Addio, addio!_" she said, with the sweetest inflection of her young
voice.

She added to the last syllable a wonderfully executed trill, in a very
low tone, as if to depict the overflowing affection of her heart by a
poetic expression. The old man, suddenly arrested by some memory,
remained on the threshold of that secret retreat. In the profound
silence we heard the sigh that came forth form his breast; he removed
the most beautiful of the rings with which his skeleton fingers were
laden, and placed it in Marianina's bosom. The young madcap laughed,
plucked out the ring, slipped it on one of her fingers over her glove,
and ran hastily back toward the salon, where the orchestra were, at
that moment, beginning the prelude of a contra-dance.

She spied us.

"Ah! were you here?" she said, blushing.

After a searching glance at us as if to question us, she ran away to
her partner with the careless petulance of her years.