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The moon arose, and cast its light over Volktman's earnest countenance, over the rich bloom and watchful eye of Lucilla, over the contemplative brow and motionless figure of Godolphin.
The moon arose, and cast its light over Volktman's earnest countenance, over the rich bloom and watchful eye of Lucilla, over the contemplative brow and motionless figure of Godolphin.
"Give me your arm then," said he; "I will sit a little while without the threshold." The Romans live in flats, as at Edinburgh, and with a common stair. Volktman's abode was in the secondo piano. He descended the stairs with a step lighter than it had been of late; and sinking into a seat without the house, seemed silently and gratefully to inhale the soft and purple air of an Italian sunset.
He laid his hand on Volktman's shoulder; and, bending forward to address him, was struck dumb by the glazed and fixed expression of the mystic's eyes. The certainty flashed across him; he hastily felt Volktman's pulse it was still. There was no doubt left on his mind; and yet the daughter, looking at him all the while, did not even dream of this sudden and awful stroke.
The images of the classic world; the bright, and cold, and beautiful divinities, whose natures as well as shapes the marble simulation of life is so especially adapted to represent; spoke but little to Volktman's pre-occupied and gloomy imagination.
But the dim, and shadowy, and solemn stars were indeed meet remembrancers of Volktman's wild daughter; and so intimately was their light connected in Godolphin's breast with that one image, that their very softness had, to his eyes, something fearful and menacing although as in sadness, not in anger. Oh, First Love! well sang the gay minstrel of France, that we return again and again to thee.
For Volktman's features were impressed with the sadness that breathed from, and caused, his prohibition to his daughter; and that prohibition had given to her features an abstraction and shadow similar to the dejection they had worn on the night we recur to.
He laid his hand on Volktman's shoulder; and, bending forward to address him, was struck dumb by the glazed and fixed expression of the mystic's eyes. The certainty flashed across him; he hastily felt Volktman's pulse it was still. There was no doubt left on his mind; and yet the daughter, looking at him all the while, did not even dream of this sudden and awful stroke.
I strive to speak, to cry out, but my voice clings to the roof of my mouth; I feel that I have no longer power over myself. Suddenly, and in the very midst of this agony, I fall into a heavy sleep; then come strange bewildering dreams, with Volktman's daughter for ever presiding over them; but with a changed countenance, calm, unutterably calm, and gazing on me with eyes that burn into my soul.
This was rapidly confirmed by the gentle and winning manners of the stranger, by his attentions to the deceased, to whom he had sent an English physician of great skill, and, as their acquaintance expanded, by the animated interest which he testified in the darling theories of the astrologer. It happened also that Volktman's mother had been the daughter of Scotch parents.
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