cognita. She was there before him, and again busied with her pencil and her album. Reginald approached, and the lady rose from her seat, and thanked him in courteous terms, for the important service he had rendered her the preceding evening.

In resuming her seat, which was one of the marble benches placed at convenient intervals throughout the garden, the lady gracefully invited Reginald to a seat near her.

"You are fairly entitled," she said, "to participate in all the pleasure I have derived from the lovely view which has so often exercised my pencil at this spot, since, but for your kind attention last evening, my poor album would have been drowned,—a fate, indeed, of which the owner herself ran no small risk.”

She offered him the book, as she spoke. The sketch she had made of the landscape was executed with an artist's skill and taste. Reginald, as a connoisseur, expressed warm commendations of its superior merit.

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"I congratulated myself yesterday evening," he said, "on my forethought in providing an umbrella, which saved a lady's hat at least from the shower. If I had then seen the contents of this artistic volume, and known that I should be instrumental, however humbly, in preserving it from destruction, my selfcomplacency would have been doubled. Your skill shows that those who wander amid the enchantments of this fairy land imbibe its genius."

"Such wanderers," returned the lady, "can pretend to nothing but feeble imitations of a genius that seems to have lived once and only once, its brilliant rays being all concentrated on one period."

"It is true," said Reginald, "that the great Italian masters were contemporary, and that they have never since that epoch been equalled. But the subjects which inspired them are yet more enduring than their fame. These sacred subjects are immortal, and it may be hoped that the inspiration they once enkindled may be revived. Nature, too, is always before the eyes of genius, and if an artist might dip his brush in those gorgeous hues now gathering around the setting sun, as he sinks below that height, the triumphs of a Salvator or a Claude would not long stand unrivalled."

As Reginald spoke, he restored the album to its fair owner. The hand of the lady trembled visibly,

as she received it from his.

"You speak with enthusiasm," she said with a deep sigh," of the charms of nature; but there are those in this false and hollow world that are doomed to be the victims and dupes of art, even when they would learn of true wisdom to be wiser and better. You are not one of these. There is something that tells me you bear a charmed existence. It has been foretold of that 'fire and flood' will pass you by and leave you unscathed and unharmed-that weapons of strife, if raised against you, shall fall harmless at your feet. You have a magician's power,-oh! do not use it unkindly!"

you

Reginald started. There was something in the voice and manner in which these words were spoken that he could not mistake, and the words themselves betrayed the speaker.

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"A fair sorceress," he said, once promised to

shield me from such evils. Another part of her own charm I would fain transfer to herself. The 'serpent's tooth' is sometimes concealed beneath the brightest flowers, and the fair sibyl would do well to pause and reflect, before she ventures her happiness in paths where the venomous reptile may be hidden."

The reply of the lady was prevented by the arrival of a party of strangers, who at that moment approached the spot where she was sitting, and Reginald availed himself of the opportunity to retreat.

Reginald had paid his last visit to the beautiful garden. It had lost its power to enchain and enchant him. The following day he once more reviewed the galleries, the next he passed in calling on the acquaintances whose kindness had been extended to him during his sojourn in the beautiful city of flowers, and in less than a week he found himself in Genoa, awaiting the friend who had proposed to meet him there.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

AN ADVENTURE.

BEFORE his present visit to the city known by the grandiloquent title of La Superba, Reginald had thoroughly explored it. He had threaded its quaint narrow streets, looking like tunnels through mountains, when contrasted with the overshadowing height of the houses, and inhabited before the picturesque attic in which he was again ceremoniously installed, having discovered from previous experience, that this observatory, as it had once seemed to him, was designed not for the contemplations of astronomers, but for the superior comfort of astonished travellers.

Reginald well knew that the finest salons, the frescoed ceilings, the gilded furniture, the Genoese velvet and Venetian mirrors, are reserved for these lofty regions; and he was not surprised when his excellenza was conducted up six flights of stairs to his apartments.

An epitome of the inhabitants of Genoa he saw daily in the piazza beneath his windows, where the busy crowd congregated, presenting a spectacle as curious as interesting.

It would have required no great effort of imagina

tion to fancy the piazza "a stage, and all the men and women only players." The peasantry with their grotesque costumes, muleteers with their long and heavily burdened trains, monks and priests, naval officers in glittering uniforms, sailors of all nations, watching the performance of some mountebank, or dancing to the music of his grinding organ, while ladies, in their long white veils, glided gracefully and fearlessly through the mingled throng, their picturesque at- . tire and elegant mien contrasting strangely with the rougher features of the scene.

A few days were still to intervene before the friend whose companionship was promised him, could arrive, and these were profitably passed in examining whatever of interest Reginald had pretermitted in his former visit.

But at the end of this time a greater disappointment than that he had met with at Florence, came to him in the city of palaces. On the day appointed for the arrival of his friend, Reginald again received a letter informing him that the sudden illness of a brother had necessarily changed his plans, and that he would be compelled to abandon the hope of continuing his travels under the pleasant auspices he had anticipated.

Reginald, though deeply regretting the cause on his friend's account, was perhaps less disappointed than he acknowledged to himself, for he had, from the first moment of his rash resolution, almost unconsciously indulged a fond wish to retrace his steps, and this obstacle now removed, a fair opportunity was afforded him of following the dictates of his inclina