mind to endure, and she sought relief from its pressure in afflicting
the innocent. Julia, whose beauty she imagined had captivated the
count, and confirmed him in indifference towards herself, she
incessantly tormented by the exercise of those various and splenetic
little arts which elude the eye of the common observer, and are only
to be known by those who have felt them. Arts, which individually are
inconsiderable, but in the aggregate amount to a cruel and decisive
effect.

From Julia's mind the idea of happiness was now faded. Pleasure had
withdrawn her beam from the prospect, and the objects no longer
illumined by her ray, became dark and colourless. As often as her
situation would permit, she withdrew from society, and sought the
freedom of solitude, where she could indulge in melancholy thoughts,
and give a loose to that despair which is so apt to follow the
disappointment of our first hopes.

Week after week elapsed, yet no mention was made of returning to
Naples. The marquis at length declared it his intention to spend the
remainder of the summer in the castle. To this determination the
marchioness submitted with decent resignation, for she was here
surrounded by a croud of flatterers, and her invention supplied her
with continual diversions: that gaiety which rendered Naples so dear
to her, glittered in the woods of Mazzini, and resounded through the
castle.

The apartments of Madame de Menon were spacious and noble. The windows
opened upon the sea, and commanded a view of the straits of Messina,
bounded on one side by the beautiful shores of the isle of Sicily, and
on the other by the high mountains of Calabria. The straits, filled