Alone now, in the principal apartment of the house, she paced its narrow boundaries with tremulous and agitated steps: she recalled the frightful suit of Nicot,--the injurious taunt of Glyndon; and she sickened at the remembrance of the hollow applauses which, bestowed on the actress, not the woman, only subjected her to contumely and insult.

In that room the recollection of her father's death, the withered laurel and the broken chords, rose chillingly before her.

Hers, she felt, was a yet gloomier fate,--the chords may break while the laurel is yet green.

The lamp, waning in its socket, burned pale and dim, and her eyes instinctively turned from the darker corner of the room.

Orphan, by the hearth of thy parent, dost thou fear the presence of the dead! And was Zanoni indeed about to quit Naples?
Should she see him no more?
Oh, fool, to think that there was grief in any other thought! The past!--that was gone! The future!--there was no future to her, Zanoni absent! But this was the night of the third day on which Zanoni had told her that, come what might, he would visit her again.