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314 endurance, and the sleepless toil of the past days and nights, or whether she again lost consciousness, and lay aa in a trance, she never knew. The irresistible reaction that follows on over-wrought excitation came on her. The worn-out limbs and the strained nerves succumbed to it, and it stole upward at length to the bram, and deadened it to all sentient life, to all remembrance, to all thought. When she awakened, she was lying, thrown forward on the heap of dying myrtle. All was intensely still; through the slit of the casement the midnight stars were shining, and the hooting of an owl carne wailingly on the stillness.

Her first memory was of him. Her first action was to arise and look out on the night. A beautiful country lay in the pallor of the young moon's rays; she knew the landscape well; it was but few leagues from Naples. Below, under some great trees of olive and of lemon, two sentinels were pacing with their carbines slanted; except for their measured tread there was no sound. The place was lonely and deserted; the out-building among maze-fields and olive-slopes of a farm belonging to the Crown. She looked; then went back to the couch of withering myrtle, and sought to make her thoughts grow clear; and the manifold hazards and remembrances of her