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156 countenance was as white as marble; and those features, so divine in their rare symmetry, might have served the Greek with a study for the Pythoness, when, from the mystic cavern and the bubbling spring, she first hears the voice of the inspiring god. Gradually the rigour and tension of that wonderful face relaxed, the colour returned, the pulse beat: the heart animated the frame.

"Tell me," she said, turning partially aside — "tell me, have you seen — do you know — a stranger in this city? one of whom wild stories are afloat?"

"You speak of Zanoni? I have seen him — I know him — and you? Ah! he, too, would be my rival! — he, too, would bear thee from me!"

"You err," said Viola, hastily, and with a deep sigh; "he pleads for you: he informed me of your love; he besought me not — not to reject it."

"Strange being! incomprehensible enigma! Why did you name him?"

"Why, ah! I would have asked whether, when you first saw him, the foreboding, the instinct, of which you spoke, came on you more fearfully, more intelligibly than before — whether you felt at once repelled from him, yet attracted towards him — whether you felt" — and the actress spoke with hurried animation — " that with was connected the secret of your life?"

"All this I felt," answered Glyndon, in a trembling voice, "the first time I was in his presence. Though all around me was gay — music, amidst lamp-lit trees, light converse near, and heaven without a cloud above