brought him to England; for a girl of surpassing beauty is a guest in
Lord Lansmere's house, and I will now tell you that that girl is she whom
Count Peschiera would make his bride."

As Randal thus spoke, and saw how his listener's brow darkened and her
eye flashed, he felt that his accomplice was secured. Violante! Had not
Leonard spoken of Violante, and with such praise? Had not his boyhood
been passed under her eyes? Who but Violante could be the rival?
Beatrice's abrupt exclamations, after a moment's pause, revealed to
Randal the advantage he had gained. And partly by rousing her jealousy
into revenge, partly by flattering her love with assurances that,
if Violante were fairly removed from England, were the wife of Count
Peschiera, it would be impossible that Leonard could remain insensible to
her own attractions; that he, Randal, would undertake to free her
honourably from her engagement to Frank Hazeldean, and obtain from her
brother the acquittal of the debt which had first fettered her hand to
that confiding suitor,--he did not quit the marchesa until she had not
only promised to do all that Randal might suggest, but impetuously urged
him to mature his plans, and hasten the hour to accomplish them. Randal
then walked some minutes musing and slow along the streets, revolving the
next meshes in his elaborate and most subtle web. And here his craft
luminously devised its masterpiece.

It was necessary, during any interval that might elapse between
Violante's disappearance and her departure from England, in order to
divert suspicion from Peschiera (who might otherwise be detained), that
some cause for her voluntary absence from Lord Lansmere's should be at
least assignable; it was still more necessary that Randal himself should
stand wholly clear from any surmise that he could have connived at the
count's designs, even should their actual perpetrator be discovered or