The tiny page stepped on before him, and after opening a large glass door and showing him into a spacious apartment, furnished with great luxury and elegance, retired and left him alone, without a word.

The vaulted ceiling--which was the interior of the dome seen from without--was painted to represent a light blue sky, in which small rosy clouds were floating, and bewitching little Loves flying about in all sorts of graceful attitudes, while the walls were hung with beautiful tapestry.
The cabinets, inlaid with exquisite Florentine mosaics and filled with many rare and curious objects of virtu, the round table covered with a superb Turkish cloth, the large, luxurious easy-chairs, the vases of priceless porcelain filled with fragrant flowers, all testified to the wealth and fastidious taste of their owner.

The richly gilded candelabra, of many branches, holding clusters of wax candles, which shed their soft, mellow light on all this magnificence, were upheld by sculptured arms and hands in black marble, to represent a negro's, issuing from fantastic white marble sleeves; as if the sable attendants were standing without the room, and had passed their arms through apertures in the wall.
Leander, dazzled by so much splendour, did not at first perceive that there was no one awaiting him in this beautiful apartment, but when he had recovered from his first feeling of astonishment, and realized that he was alone, he proceeded to take off his cloak and lay it, with his hat and sword, on a chair in one corner, after which he deliberately rearranged his luxuriant ringlets in front of a Venetian mirror, and then, assuming his most graceful and telling pose, began pouring forth in dulcet tones the following monologue: "But where, oh! where, is the divinity of this Paradise?
Here is the temple indeed, but I see not the goddess.

When, oh! when, will she deign to emerge from the cloud that veils her perfect form, and reveal herself to the adoring eyes, that wait so impatiently to behold her ?" rolling the said organs of vision about in the most effective manner by way of illustration.
Just at that moment, as if in response to this eloquent appeal, the crimson silk hanging, which fell in front of a door that Leander had not noticed, was pushed aside, and the lady he had come to seek stood before him; with the little black velvet mask still over her face, to the great disappointment and discomfiture of her expectant suitor.

"Can it be possible that she is ugly ?" he thought to himself; "this obstinate clinging to the mask alarms me." But his uncertainty was of short duration, for the lady, advancing to the centre of the room, where Leander stood respectfully awaiting her pleasure, untied the strings of the mask, took it off, and threw it down on the table, disclosing a rather pretty face, with tolerably regular features, large, brilliant, brown eyes, and smiling red lips.