how could it be otherwise? But even had she witnessed the dreary reality of her lover's situation, hers was not a mind to have shrunk from partaking it, or a heart that would have cooled beneath the chilling inAluence of poverty.

"The generous devotion of Isotta vanquished the last struggles of pride in Rodrigo's breast, and it was agreed that on the ensuing night the nurse should disguise her young lady in the mantilla of her niece, and with her leave the Palazzo Grimani, meet in the next street Manfredoni, who was to conduct them to a church, where a priest would be in attendance to join their hands, and pronounce the nuptial benediction. On the morning of this eventful day, Il Conte Barbarigo was led to the apartment of Isotta, by her father, and presented as her affianced husband. The trembling lady essayed to address her parent, but her timidity overpowered her resolution, the words died on her lips, and he left Barbarigo to plead his own suit, ere she had recovered sufficient self-command to speak. How greatly was her repugnance to her suitor increased, when in him she recognised the person who had so unfeelingly and contemptuously commented on the poverty of Manfredoni, the first night that she had ever seen him! He poured forth a rhapsody of compliments to her, and self-gratulations on his own good fortune in having secured a prize which all must desire to possess, and seizing the trembling hand of Isotta, would have pressed his lips on it, had she not instantly and proudly snatched it from his rude grasp, informing him that though his suit was sanctioned by her father, she had quite determined on not acceding to it. The surprise with which he heard this declaration was mingled with more of indignation than was befitting a lover to display before the lady to whose affection he aspired; and his tone approached to insolence as he demanded, rather than entreated to know, if he was to attribute her refusal of his addresses to a preference for another, or to a personal dislike to himself. Her natural dignity led her to resent the impertinence of his manner by answering that she considered it quite sufficient to state that she decidedly declined his offer; and so saying, with an air of offended delicacy, she withdrew from the chamber.

"Grimani was nearly as astonished, and quite as vexed as Barbarigo, when the latter recounted to him the unfavourable result of his interview with the Lady Isotta.

"Be assured she loves another,' said the rejected suitor, regarding his image complacently in the mirror opposite to which he had taken his station, otherwise I do not think she could have declined my proposals so decidedly.'

"Her loving another is out of the question,' said Grimani; for she has never seen a man except myself and her confessor, since the night of her presentation. I must ascertain the motives of this inexplicable refusal, and I trust the result will prove that she cannot long remain inexorable to your vows.'

"Grimani hurried to the apartment of his daughter, giving way to the first angry feeling she had ever excited in his breast; and sternly demanded why she had presumed to act in disobedience to his wishes. "The lady Isotta tremblingly avowed her repugnance to Barbarigo, and falling at the feet of her father, confessed that she loved another. "How? when? and where?' asked the astonished and enraged Gri

mani, ‘have you seen any one to love? Tell me instantly, I command you!'

"The name of Manfredoni had no sooner been pronounced by her faltering tongue, than his rage became ungovernable.

"What! exclaimed he, would you wed a beggar-one whose palace is crumbling into ruins around him, and only fit for the abode of the foul birds of night? One whose ungovernable pride and squalid poverty, render him the subject of ridicule among all the nobles? It is absurd, and excites my choler, to think that a daughter of mine should be so infatuated, but I shall conquer this obstinacy.'

"Kindness might have softened the feelings of Isotta, but the contemptuous expressions used by her father aroused a pride and wilfulness hitherto foreign to her nature; and as he left the apartment, uttering invectives against her and her lover, she rejoiced in the thought, that in a few hours she should be Manfredoni's bride, and atone to him by her devoted love, for all the slights and injuries poverty had entailed on him. At the appointed hour Isotta, disguised in the habiliments of her nurse's niece, and with her veil drawn closely over her face, supported by the arm of the faithful Beatrice, stole tremblingly from the home of her childhood; and being met by Manfredoni, was conducted to church, where a priest joined their hands. Never did Hymen's bonds unite two more enamoured hearts than Rodrigo's and Isotta's, who now pressed each other's hands, and listened to each other's voices for the first time. The progress of their love had been so rapid, that no opportunity of meeting had offered at any of the fêtes to which both might have been invited, and to enter the Palazzo Grimani clandestinely, thereby compromising the delicacy of her who was dearer to him than life, was never thought of by the honourable and high-minded Rodrigo. But even had such been his desire, his fair mistress would not have consented, nor would the nurse have permitted a step so likely to prove injurious to the unsullied purity of her young charge. Now, however, as the husband of Isotta, he had a right to enter, and the nurse willingly took charge of the ladder of ropes, with which, leaving the church, the bridegroom had charged her, and which she was to secure to the balustrade of the balcony, and throw down when his gondola approached.

on

"It was not without deep reluctance that the married lovers separated on arriving near the Palazzo Grimani, though with the assurance of meeting again in the space of a brief hour. The nurse had to entreat and chide, again and again, yet still those fond hands, that had never before,that night been interlaced, were loath to quit the tender grasp that bound them together, and their enraptured ears drank in the new and unaccustomed tones of those delicious voices, that had hitherto only been heard faintly at a distance, now breathing whispers of fervent, happy affection, uttered in all the sincerity and confidence that wedded love can alone bestow.

"The new-made bride and her nurse regained their apartment in safety, the ladder was made fast, the Lady Isotta trembling at the seeming fragility of the rope, and Beatrice reassuring her of its strength. How often and proudly did the bride press to her lips the golden symbol of that union, on which the church had so lately bestowed its benediction, and repeat, that now not even her Jan.-VOL. LVIII. NO. CCXXIX.

H

father could separate her from her husband. The lady had retired to her couch, and the nurse having heard the gondola approach beneath the balcony, some twenty minutes before the appointed hour, uttered an exclamation at the impatience of love, which had sent Manfredoni so much sooner than she looked for his coming, again entreated her lady not to permit her lord to speak save in the lowest whispers, lest his voice should be heard, withdrew, leaving the nuptial chamber in total darkness, the moment she heard the ladder of ropes fall into the gondola beneath.

"Quickly a step was heard ascending, the casement was closed, and Isotta whispered,

"Rodrigo, my love, my lord, my husband! speak to me only in the Does not our stolen marriage lowest tones, for we may be overheard. appear like a dream? It is only this blessed ring that you so lately gave me at the altar, that convinces me I am indeed your wife, for ever, and ever yours.'

"Two hours had flown by, when Grimani, rushed into his daughter's chamber, followed by eight armed men, who buried their stilettos deep in the breast of him on whose shoulder the head of Isotta reclined, and whose death-shriek awoke her from slumber.

"The blaze of their torches fell full on the face of the murdered man, in whose scowling lineaments, she discovered not the countenance of her husband, but those of the hateful Barbarigo.

*

*

"The suspicion that secret meetings had taken place between the lovers had determined Grimani to employ spies to watch the palazzo at night. A conviction that the Lady Isotta's rejection of his suit had arisen from a preference to another, had induced Barbarigo also to watch, and he did so in person. On the previous night, he had seen a gondola approach the balcony of the Grimani palace, had heard the serenade, and observed the lady and her nurse let drop a letter to the cavalier who was in it, he had tracked the gondola on its return to the Palazzo Manfredoni, and ascertained that it was its master who had thus held a clandestine correspondence with the Lady Isotta. Suspicions the most injurious to her honour flashed on his unworthy mind, yet still the desire to possess her hand, and by that means acquire the immense wealth to which she was heiress, remained in its pristine force. The ensuing night he again approached in his gondola, with the intention of watching the movements of his rival, and of frustrating his plans if possible, when seeing the ladder of ropes thrown down, and the light withdrawn, he instantly adopted the fiend-like notion of taking advantage of the discovery he had made, and of thus securing, by the most foul means, the prize he sought to possess.

"Before ascending the balcony, he charged two of his gondoliers, who were in truth bravoes in his pay, to intercept any gondola that approached the palazzo, and to silence for ever with their stilettos, any cavalier who might occupy it. Too well had his orders been obeyed, for the corse of Manfredoni, pierced by many wounds, was a few days after drawn forth from the canal.

"Grimani's spies had discovered that a cavalier had entered the apartment of his daughter by a ladder of ropes; but as he was with the Council of Ten, in the palazzo of the Doge, he was not apprized of the

circumstance till nearly two hours after it had occurred. Concluding that the nocturnal intruder could be no other than Manfredoni, he determined on taking signal vengeance on him, by getting him shut up in the prison of the Inquisition; but when he found his daughter in the arms of him whom he imagined to be her seducer, his vindictive rage knew no bounds, and he ordered the attendants to efface the stain on the honour of his ancient house, by the blood of him who had inflicted it. "The piercing shriek, with which the Lady Isotta recognised the face of her infamous betrayer, was the last knell of her departing reason. She never showed the slightest symptom of recollection after, except by insisting on being always attired as a bride; a harmless fancy, in which her unhappy father indulged her, and seated on a low ottoman, she would sit for hours gazing on the nuptial ring which still encircled the finger on which Manfredoni had placed it.

"Beatrice, signor, was the great-grandmother of my father, she related this story so often to her descendants, that one of them, distinguished for that love of literature, which marked our family, and which without vanity, I may say, has descended to us from father to son, wrote down the particulars, which I have so many times perused, that I repeat the history con amore, as you may have observed, signor, with my own comments thereupon. And by whom could the sad tale be related with greater claims for sympathy than from a descendant of the faithful nurse of its unhappy though lovely heroine ?"

THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY.

IN TWO PARTS.

OF THE LOVES OF MR. PERKINS AND MISS GORGON, AND OF THE TWO GREAT FACTIONS IN THE TOWN OF OLDBOROUGH.

"My dear, John," cried Lucy, with a very wise look indeed, "it must and shall be so. As for Doughty-street, with our means, a house is out of the question. We must keep three servants, and aunt Biggs says the taxes are one-and-twenty pounds a year."

"I have seen a sweet place at Chelsea," remarked John; "Paradiserow, No. 17,-garden-greenhouse-fifty pounds a year-omnibus to town within a mile."

"What, that I may be left alone all day, and you spend a fortune in driving backward and forward in those horrid breakneck cabs? My darling, I should die there-die of fright, I know I should. Did you not say yourself that the road was not as yet lighted, and that the place swarmed with public-houses and dreadful tipsy Irish bricklayers? Would kill me, John ?"

you

"My da-arling," said John, with tremendous fondness, clutching Miss Lucy suddenly round the waist, and rapping the hand of that young person violently against his waistcoat," my da-arling, don't

say such things, even in joke. If I objected to the chambers, it is only because you, my love, with your birth and connexions, ought to have a house of your own. The chambers are quite large enough, and certainly quite good enough for me." And so after some more sweet parley on the part of these young people, it was agreed that they should take up their abode, when married, in a part of the house, number one hundred and something, Bedford-row.

It will be necessary to explain to the reader, that John was no other than John Perkins, Esq., of the Middle Temple, barrister at law, and that Miss Lucy was the daughter of the late Captain Graham, and Marianne Biggs, his wife. The captain being of noble connexions, younger son of a baronet, cousin to Lord X., and related to the Y. family, had angered all his relatives, by marrying a very silly pretty young woman, who kept a lady's school at Canterbury. She had six hundred pounds to her fortune, which the captain laid out in the purchase of a sweet travelling-carriage and dressing-case for himself; and going abroad with his lady, spent several years in the principal prisons of Europe, in one of which he died. His wife and daughter were meantime supported by the contributions of Mrs. Jemima Biggs, who still kept the lady's school.

At last a dear old relative-such a one as one reads of in romances -died and left seven thousand pounds apiece to the two sisters, whereupon the elder gave up schooling and retired to London, and the younger managed to live with some comfort and decency at Brussels, upon two hundred and ten pounds per annum. Mrs. Gorgon never touched a shilling of her capital, for the very good reason that it was placed entirely out of her reach; so that when she died, her daughter found herself in possession of a sum of money that is not always to be met with in this world.

Her aunt, the baronet's lady, and her aunt, the ex-schoolmistress, both wrote very pressing invitations to her, and she resided with each for six months after her arrival in England. Now for a second time she had come to Mrs. Biggs, Caroline-place, Mecklenburgh-square. It was under the roof of that respectable old lady, that John Perkins, Esq., being invited to take tea, wooed and won Miss Gorgon.

Having thuse described the circumstances of Miss Gorgon's life, let us pass for a moment from that young lady, and lift up the veil of mystery which envelops the deeds and character of Perkins.

Perkins, too, was an orphan; and he and his Lucy, of summer evenings, when Sol descending lingered fondly yet about the minarets of the Foundling, and gilded the grassplots of Mecklenburgh-squarePerkins, I say, and Lucy would often sit together in the summer-house of that pleasure-ground, and muse upon the strange coincidences of their life. Lucy was motherless and fatherless, so too was Perkins. If Perkins was brotherless and sisterless, was not Lucy likewise an only child? Perkins was twenty-three-his age and Lucy's united, amounted to forty-six; and it was to be remarked as a fact still more extraordinary, that while Lucy's relatives were aunts, John's were uncles; Mysterious spirit of love!-let us treat thee with respect and whisper not too many of thy secrets. The fact is, John and Lucy were a pair of fools (as every young couple ought to be who have hearts that are worth a farthing), and were ready to find coincidences, sympathies,