were grave and deep. O false voice! how it had deceived her! Her quick
convictions seized the all that Helen had left unsaid. And now suddenly
she felt what it is to love, and what it is to despair. So she sat,
crushed and solitary, neither murmuring nor weeping, only now and then
passing her hand across her brow, as if to clear away some cloud that
would not be dispersed; or heaving a deep sigh, as if to throw off some
load that no time henceforth could remove. There are certain moments in
life in which we say to ourselves, "All is over; no matter what else
changes, that which I have made my all is gone evermore--evermore!"
And our own thought rings back in our ears, "Evermore--evermore!"




CHAPTER VIII.

As Violante thus sat, a stranger, passing stealthily through the trees,
stood between herself and the evening sun. She saw him not. He paused a
moment, and then spoke low, in her native tongue, addressing her by the
name which she had borne in Italy. He spoke as a relation, and excused
his intrusion: "For," said he, "I come to suggest to the daughter the
means by which she can restore to her father his country and his
honours."

At the word "father" Violante roused herself, and all her love for that
father rushed back upon her with double force. It does so ever,--we love
most our parents at the moment when some tie less holy is abruptly
broken; and when the conscience says, "There, at least, is a love that
has never deceived thee!"