ficient in his native tongue, and he enjoyed the quiet pleasure of following the delightful accent upon her unaccustomed lips. You really love your language while hearing it spoken indifferently well by an agreeable young girl in a foreign country. Antonia had studied it with zeal and music was nothing to her charming errors and timid hesitation. A being so pure and lovely was enough at all times to win the eye of the student, bathed as his spirit was in the fervour of poetry. While watching, and gently aiding her along the path of a new language, he found himself half unconsciously yielding to the gentle anxieties, and half playful, half tender alarms of a happy mother, scarcely trusting the first uncertain steps of a beautiful child. He felt that the sportive communion thus increasing between them, would have been dangerous in other years. But the image of Flora had to him the sacred sadness of buried love, and

he sighed to look down on Antonia and think how cold and dead his heart was, that her radiant face, her guileless spirit, could now waken in his breast only those vain regrets, that tender anguish, which in the triumphs of study he had nearly forgotten.

He was struck too with the blended artlessness and intelligence of her nature—with her antique opinions and utter ignorance of the world, so strangely contrasted with her high cultivation upon certain accomplishments.

They were engaged before a celebrated painting, and while Norman was smiling with a heart more at rest than it had been for years upon the engaging and animated face of his guide-even as one of the brawling battling world gazes on a newly unfolded rosebud, wondering how the inert soil could yield a thing so fair, so tender-he beheld a third person in the habit of a priest close by his side. He had apparently approached a few moments

before, with the stealthy pace of a cat, and now stood smiling upon them as they lingered before the broad painting, their shadows lengthened on the glittering and pictured floor.

"The fair Antonia," he said, "has not welcomed her instructor, who has just returned from Pisa. Anxiety to see my dear child has brought me unbidden into her presence."

"Oh! Father Ambrose; dear dear Father Ambrose, how good! how kind! have you speeded well in your journey? is your sick friend recovered? will you remain with us now?"

The Priest smiled.

"If I had as many mouths as Hydra, yours would find work for them all."

"Oh then I know your friend is well, or else you would not smile, and all a girl's idle questions are answered without a word; but, father Ambrose, know Signor Montfort, my father's most esteemed friend and guest; he

has supplied your place, for he is learned as you are, and I am his debtor for much-much wisdom, and Signor Montfort will already have conjectured that this is our honoured father Ambrose whom we have spoken of in his absence so often."

The holy man turned his face upon Norman, and the keen eye of the latter detected, or imagined that he did so, a certain scarce perceptible ripple that crossed its singular smoothness. His eye perused the face a moment with a sinister but brief shade of displeasure. Norman returned the gaze, with an interest which surprised him. When had he seen those features? where had that insinuating smile before crossed his observation? had he previously met him indeed? what an unquiet association stirred at his heart as he encountered the glance of those small but keen eyes! He replied briefly, and took occasion, the subsequent moment, while the intruder was engaged in

conversation with Antonia, to note him more narrowly. He was small, but beautifully formed, with a white slender hand, black eyes and hair and a silent smile of singular sweetness. His voice was soft and musical, and he had the power of modulating it to harmonize with the most secret chords vibrating in the bosom of those he addressed; yet, with his intelligent and classical cast of features, the wavy raven hair parted on that white round brow, the almost feminine yet voluptuous mouth and snowy teeth-gleaming through with all the graces of his person and manner, there was about him something wily and insincere-something which no sooner fastened admiration, than it awakened distrust. There was, besides, that on his features which impressed Norman powerfully with a sense of the past, which dimly and mysteriously awaked in his bosom thrilling associations and vague presentiments. The object of his new interest