him, and tried, by jesting, to obtainadmission for Luigi; but her
father, also jesting, refused. She sulked, then returned to coax once

more, and sulked again, until, by the end of the evening, she was
forced to be content with having impressed upon her father's mind both

her love for Luigi and the idea of an approaching marriage.
The next day she said no more about her love; she was more caressing

to her father than she had ever been, and testified the utmost
gratitude, as if to thank him for the consent he seemed to have given

by his silence. That evening she sang and played to him for a long
time, exclaiming now and then: "We want a man's voice for this

nocturne." Ginevra was an Italian, and that says all.
At the end of a week her mother signed to her. She went; and Elisa

Piombo whispered in her ear:--
"I have persuaded your father to receive him."

"Oh! mother, how happy you have made me!"
That day Ginevra had the joy of coming home on the arm of her Luigi.

The officer came out of his hiding-place for the second time only. The
earnest appeals which Ginevra made to the Duc de Feltre, then minister

of war, had been crowned with complete success. Luigi's name was
replaced upon the roll of officers awaiting orders. This was the first

great step toward better things. Warned by Ginevra of the difficulties
he would encounter with her father, the young man dared not express

his fear of finding it impossible to please the old man. Courageous
under adversity, brave on a battlefield, he trembled at the thought of

entering Piombo's salon. Ginevra felt him tremble, and this emotion,
the source of which lay in her, was, to her eyes, another proof of

love.
"How pale you are!" she said to him when they reached the door of the

house.
"Oh! Ginevra, if it concerned my life only!--"

Though Bartolomeo had been notified by his wife of the formal
presentation Ginevra was to make of her lover, he would not advance to

meet him, but remained seated in his usual arm-chair, and the
sternness of his brow was awful.

"Father," said Ginevra, "I bring you a person you will no doubt be
pleased to see,--a soldier who fought beside the Emperor at Mont-

Saint-Jean."
The baron rose, cast a sidelong glance at Luigi, and said, in a

sardonic tone:--
"Monsieur is not decorated."

"I no longer wear the Legion of honor," replied Luigi, timidly, still
standing.

Ginevra, mortified by her father's incivility, dragged forward a
chair. The officer's answer seemed to satisfy the old servant of

Napoleon. Madame Piombo, observing that her husband's eyebrows were
resuming their natural position, said, by way of conversation:

"Monsieur's resemblance to a person we knew in Corsica, Nina Porta, is
really surprising."

"Nothing could be more natural," replied the young man, on whose face
Piombo's flaming eyes now rested. "Nina was my sister."

"Are you Luigi Porta?" asked the old man.
"Yes."

Bartolomeo rose, tottered, was forced to lean against a chair and
beckon to his wife. Elisa Piombo came to him. Then the two old people,

silently, each supporting the other, left the room, abandoning their
daughter with a sort of horror.

Luigi Porta, bewildered, looked at Ginevra, who had turned as white as
a marblestatue, and stood gazing at the door through which her father

and mother had disappeared. This departure and this silence seemed to
her so solemn that, for the first time, in her whole life, a feeling

of fear entered her soul. She struck her hands together with great
force, and said, in a voice so shaken that none but a lover could have

heard the words:--
"What misery in a word!"

"In the name of our love, what have I said?" asked Luigi Porta.
"My father," she replied, "never spoke to me of our deplorable

history, and I was too young when we left Corsica to know anything
about it."

"Are we in vendetta?" asked Luigi, trembling.
"Yes. I have heard my mother say that the Portas killed my brother and

burned our house. My father then massacred the whole family. How is it
that you survived?--for you were tied to the posts of the bed before

they set fire to the house."
"I do not know," replied Luigi. "I was taken to Genoa when six years

old, and given in charge of an old man named Colonna. No detail about
my family was told to me. I knew only that I was an orphan, and

without property. Old Colonna was a father to me; and I bore his name
until I entered the army. In order to do that, I had to show my

certificate of birth in order to prove my identity. Colonna then told
me, still a mere child, that I had enemies. And he advised me to take

Luigi as my surname, and so evade them."
"Go, go, Luigi!" cried Ginevra. "No, stay; I must go with you. So long

as you are in my father's house you have nothing to fear; but the
moment you leave it, take care! you will go from danger to danger. My

father has two Corsicans in his service, and if he does not lie in
wait to kill you, they will."

"Ginevra," he said, "this feud, does it exist between you and me?"
The girl smiled sadly and bowed her head. Presently she raised it, and

said, with a sort of pride:--
"Oh, Luigi, our love must be pure and sincere, indeed, to give me

strength to tread the path I am about to enter. But it involves a
happiness that will last throughout our lives, will it not?"

Luigi answered by a smile, and pressed her hand.
Ginevra comprehended that true love could despise all vulgar

protestations at such a moment. This calm and restrained expression of
his feelings foreshadowed, in some sense, their strength and their

duration.
The destiny of the pair was then and there decided. Ginevra foresaw a

cruel struggle, but the idea of abandoning Luigi--an idea which may
have floated in her soul--vanished completely. His forever, she

dragged him suddenly, with a desperate sort of energy, from her
father's house, and did not leave him till she saw him reach the house

where Servin had engaged a modest lodging.
By the time she reached home, Ginevra had attained to that serenity

which is caused by a firm resolution; no sign in her manner betrayed
uneasiness. She turned on her father and mother, whom she found in the

act of sitting down to dinner, a glance of exceedinggentleness devoid
of hardihood. She saw that her mother had been weeping; the redness of

those withered eyelids shook her heart, but she hid her emotion. No
one touched the dinner which was served to them. A horror of food is

one of the chief symptoms which reveal a great crisis in life. All
three rose from table without having addressed a single word to one

another.
When Ginevra had placed herself between her father and mother in the

great and gloomy salon, Piombo tried to speak, but his voice failed
him; he tried to walk, but he had no strength in his legs. He returned

to his seat and rang the bell.
"Pietro," he said, at last, to the footman, "light the fire; I am

cold."
Ginevra trembled, and looked at her father anxiously. The struggle

within him must have been horrible, for his face was distorted.
Ginevra knew the extent of the peril before her, but she did not

flinch. Bartolomeo, meanwhile, cast furtive glances at his daughter,
as if he feared a character whose violence was the work of his own

hands.
Between such natures all things must be extreme. The certainty of some