As she spoke, Glyndon listened with visible emotion
and perturbation. “Isabel!” he exclaimed,
as she ceased, “your words more than ever enchain
me to you. As you feel, I feel. I, too,
have been ever haunted with a chill and unearthly
foreboding. Amidst the crowds of men I have
felt alone. In all my pleasures, my toils, my
pursuits, a warning voice has murmured in my ear,
’Time has a dark mystery in store for thy manhood.’
When you spoke it was as the voice of my own soul.”
Isabel gazed upon him in wonder and fear. Her
countenance was as white as marble, and those features,
so divine in their rare symmetry, might have served
the Greek with a study for the Pythoness when, from
the mystic cavern and the bubbling spring, she first
hears the voice of the inspiring god. Gradually
the rigor and tension of that wonderful face relaxed,
the color returned, the pulse beat, the heart animated
the frame.
“Tell me,” she said, turning partially
aside, “tell me, have you seen, do you know,
a stranger in this city,—one of whom wild
stories are afloat?”
“You speak of Zicci. I have seen him;
I know him! And you? Ah! he, too, would
be my rival,—he, too, would bear thee from
me!”
“You err,” said Isabel, hastily and with
a deep sigh,—“he pleads for you;
he informed me of your love; he besought me not—not
to reject it.”
“Strange being, incomprehensible enigma, why
did you name him?”
“Why? Ah! I would have asked whether,
when you first saw him, the foreboding, the instinct,
of which you spoke came on you more fearfully, more
intelligibly than before; whether you felt at once
repelled from him, yet attracted towards him; whether
you felt [and the actress spoke with hurried animation]
that with Him was connected the secret of your life!”
“All this I felt,” answered Glyndon, in
a trembling voice, “the first time I was in
his presence. Though all around me was gay,—music,
amidst lamp-lit trees, light converse near, and heaven
without a cloud above,—my knees knocked
together, my hair bristled, and my blood curdled like
ice; since then he has divided my thoughts with thee.”
“No more, no more,” said Isabel, in a
stifled tone; “there must be the hand of Fate
in this. I can speak no more to you now; farewell.”
She sprang past him into the house and closed the
door. Glyndon did not dare to follow her, nor,
strange as it may seem, was he so inclined. The
thought and recollection of that moonlight hour in
the gardens, of the strange address of Zicci, froze
up all human passion; Isabel herself, if not forgotten,
shrank back like a shadow into the recesses of his
breast. He shivered as he stepped into the sunlight,
and musingly retraced his steps into the more populous
parts of that liveliest of Italian cities.
