interest in their fortunes.

Thus little would remain to be accounted for, except the deportment of
Miriam herself; her reserve, her brooding melancholy, her petulance,
and moody passion. If generously interpreted, even these morbid symptoms
might have sufficient cause in the stimulating and exhaustive influences
of imaginative art, exercised by a delicate young woman, in the nervous
and unwholesome atmosphere of Rome. Such, at least, was the view of the
case which Hilda and Kenyon endeavored to impress on their own minds,
and impart to those whom their opinions might influence.

One of Miriam's friends took the matter sadly to heart. This was the
young Italian. Donatello, as we have seen, had been an eyewitness of
the stranger's first appearance, and had ever since nourished a singular
prejudice against the mysterious, dusky, death-scented apparition.
It resembled not so much a human dislike or hatred, as one of those
instinctive, unreasoning antipathies which the lower animals sometimes
display, and which generally prove more trustworthy than the acutest
insight into character. The shadow of the model, always flung into the
light which Miriam diffused around her, caused no slight trouble to
Donatello. Yet he was of a nature so remarkably genial and joyous, so
simply happy, that he might well afford to have something subtracted
from his comfort, and make tolerable shift to live upon what remained.




CHAPTER V