Page:Francesca Carrara 2.pdf/303



" it go down to the grave with me; for there, even as this silken curl will perish, in darkness and decay, so will perish all the links that bind me to Marie Mancini. Ah! how well I remember the twilight, when she bade me choose amid the thousand bright auburn ringlets that danced around her brow! It was such an evening as this. The rich colours of the sunset had melted away into the deep purple sky, whose only radiance was where a silvery trembling on the air came from the moon, shining as she is shining now over yonder casement. We were very young then."

And youth it was that gave its own value to that early pledge of vows never to be redeemed—of faith plighted but to be broken. The fragile chain, the braided hair, are the graceful tokens