interruption, to his beloved occupations and mysterious researches. One
visitor alone found it possible to win frequent ingress to his seclusion;
it was the young English man. A sentiment of remorse at the jealous
feelings he had experienced, and for which his wife, though an Italian,
had never given him even the shadow of a cause, had softened--into a
feeling rendered kind by the associations of the deceased, and a vague
desire to atone to her for an acknowledged error,--the dislike he had at
first conceived against the young man. This was rapidly confirmed by the
gentle and winning manners of the stranger, by his attentions to the
deceased, to whom he had sent an English physician of great skill, and, as
their acquaintance expanded, by the animated interest which he testified
in the darling theories of the astrologer.

It happened also that Volktman's mother had been the daughter of Scotch
parents. She had taught him the English tongue; and it was the only
language, save his own, which he spoke as a native. This circumstance
tended greatly to facilitate his intercourse with the traveller; and he
found in the society of a man ardent, sensitive, melancholy, and addicted
to all abstract contemplation, a pleasure which, among the keen, but
uncultivated intellects of Italy, he had never enjoyed.

Frequently, then, came the young Englishman to the lone house on the Appia
Via; and the mysterious and unearthly conversation of the starry visionary
afforded to him, who had early learned to scrutinise the varieties of his
kind, a strange delight, heightened by the contrast it presented to the
worldly natures with which he usually associated, and the commonplace
occupations of a life in pursuit of pleasure.

And there was one who, child as she was, watched the coming of that young
and beautiful stranger with emotion beyond her years. Brought up alone;