When she was spoken to, she did not often answer to the purpose, but
rather appeared to reply as to some interrogatory of her own; in the midst
of one occupation, she would start up to another; leave that, in turn,
undone, and sit down in silence lasting for hours. Her voice, in singing,
was exquisitely melodious; she had too, an intuitive talent for painting;
and she read all the books that came in her way with an avidity that
bespoke at once the restlessness and the genius of her mind.

This description of Lucilla must, I need scarcely repeat, be considered as
applicable to her at some years distant from the time in which the young
Englishman first attracted her childish but ardent imagination. To her,
that face, with its regular and harmonious features, its golden hair, and
soft, shy, melancholy aspect, seemed as belonging to a higher and brighter
order of beings than those who, with exaggerated lineaments and swarthy
hues, surrounded and displeased her. She took a strange and thrilling
pleasure in creeping to his side, and looking up, when unobserved, at the
countenance which, in his absence, she loved to imitate with her pencil by
day; and to recall in her dreams at night. But she seldom spoke to him,
and she shrank, covered with painful blushes, from his arms, whenever he
attempted to bestow on her those caresses which children are wont to claim
as an attention. Once, however, she summoned courage to ask him to teach
her English, and he complied. She learned that language with surprising
facility; and as Volktman loved its sound she grew familiar with its
difficulties, by always addressing her father in a tongue which became
inexpressibly dear to her. And the young stranger delighted to hear that
soft and melodious voice, with its trembling, Italian accent, make music
from the nervous and masculine language of his native land. Scarce
accountably to himself, a certain tender and peculiar interest in the
fortunes of this singular and bewitching child grew up within