the polenta."

"Since I have known this man," said the actress, half aloud, "since his
dark eyes have fascinated me, I am no longer the same. I long to escape
from myself,--to glide with the sunbeam over the hill-tops; to become
something that is not of earth. Is it, indeed, that he is a sorcerer,
as I have heard? Phantoms float before me at night, and a fluttering
like the wing of a bird within my heart seems as if the spirit were
terrified, and would break its cage."

While murmuring these incoherent rhapsodies, a step that she did not
hear approached the actress, and a light hand touched her arm.

"Isabella! carissima! Isabella!"

She turned, and saw Glyndon. The sight of his fair young face calmed
her at once. She did not love him, yet his sight gave her pleasure.
She had for him a kind and grateful feeling. Ah, if she had never
beheld Zicci!

"Isabel," said the Englishman, drawing her again to the bench from which
she had risen, and seating himself beside her, "you know how
passionately I love thee. Hitherto thou hast played with my impatience
and my ardor, thou hast sometimes smiled, sometimes frowned away my
importunities for a reply to my suit; but this day--I know not how it
is--I feel a more sustained and settled courage to address thee, and
learn the happiest or the worst. I have rivals, I know,--rivals who are
more powerful than the poor artist. Are they also more favored?"

Isabel blushed faintly, but her countenance was grave and distressed.