“Oh! Isabel could not see me to-night.
The old woman gave me a note of excuse.”
“You must not marry her; what would they all
say at home?”
“Let us enjoy the present,” said Glyndon,
with vivacity; “we are young, rich, good-looking:
let us not think of to-morrow.”
“Bravo, Glyndon! Here we are at the hotel.
Sleep sound, and don’t dream of Signor Zicci.”
Clarence Glyndon was a young man of small but independent
fortune. He had, early in life, evinced considerable
promise in the art of painting, and rather from enthusiasm
than the want of a profession, he had resolved to
devote himself to a career which in England has been
seldom entered upon by persons who can live on their
own means. Without being a poet, Glyndon had
also manifested a graceful faculty for verse, which
had contributed to win his entry into society above
his birth. Spoiled and flattered from his youth
upward, his natural talents were in some measure relaxed
by indolence and that worldly and selfish habit of
thought which frivolous companionship often engenders,
and which is withering alike to stern virtue and high
genius. The luxuriance of his fancy was unabated;
but the affections, which are the life of fancy, had
grown languid and inactive. His youth, his vanity,
and a restless daring and thirst of adventure had
from time to time involved him in dangers and dilemmas,
out of which, of late, he had always extricated himself
with the ingenious felicity of a clever head and cool
heart. He had left England for Rome with the
avowed purpose and sincere resolution of studying
the divine masterpieces of art; but pleasure had soon
allured him from ambition, and he quitted the gloomy
palaces of Rome for the gay shores and animated revelries
of Naples. Here he had fallen in love—deeply
in love, as he said and thought—with a young
person celebrated at Naples, Isabel di Pisani.
She was the only daughter of an Italian by an English
mother. The father had known better days; in
his prosperity he had travelled, and won in England
the affections of a lady of some fortune. He
had been induced to speculate; he lost his all; he
settled at Naples, and taught languages and music.
His wife died when Isabel, christened from her mother,
was ten years old. At sixteen she came out on
the stage; two years afterwards her father departed
this life, and Isabel was an orphan.
Glyndon, a man of pleasure and a regular attendant
at the theatre, had remarked the young actress behind
the scenes; he fell in love with her, and he told
her so. The girl listened to him, perhaps from
vanity, perhaps from ambition, perhaps from coquetry;
she listened, and allowed but few stolen interviews,
in which she permitted no favor to the Englishman
it was one reason why he loved her so much.
The day following that on which our story opens, Glyndon
was riding alone by the shores of the Neapolitan sea,
on the other side of the Cavern of Pausilippo.
It was past noon; the sun had lost its early fervor,
and a cool breeze sprang voluptuously from the sparkling
sea. Bending over a fragment of stone near the
roadside, he perceived the form of a man; and when
he approached he recognized Zicci.
