las Angustias.* I passed, musing on the course of things, from the fragments of Arabic taste, and Mahometan superstition, into the temple of Christian rites. Vespers were just celebrated. A few stragglers, who had remained after service, gradually disappeared. I was still examining monuments, gazing on pictures, and numbering columns, when darkness fell around me: the different avenues of entrance were closed, all save one, which led to what had once been a Moorish orangerie: this orangerie formed a part of the pleasuregrounds and cemetery of the adjoining convent. While I looked round for some means of egress, and twilight rendered all objects dim and uncertain, sounds, that seemed to come from heaven, met my ear: the next moment my eye upon the minstrel. By the white veil and rosary, it was an unprofessed novice: she was seated on the fragment of

* Our Lady of Sorrow.

fell

a Moorish bath, leaning her cheek close to the lute, from which she had drawn such enchanting harmony, as if she were childishly, yet prettily, charmed with the sound herself had made.

"It is a pretty image altogether," said his auditor, seating himself beside him, among the ruins, "and reminds me of a famous picture of Rosso Fiorentino, of a seraph listening to its own lute."

"The resemblance was so great,” returned the narrator, "that I had that design copied on this box, with the little alteration of substituting the novice's veil for the wing of the cherub, and the head of a lovely woman for that of a seraph."

As he spoke, he drew from his pocket a superb gold box, surmounted with the picture he had described, done in enamel. The moonlight fell full upon its surface; and in the position in which the Commodore held it, it was distinctly

visible. "Is this head a portrait?" he

demanded.

"Not exactly. It was done from the idea I gave the artist; an idea in every sense: for though the form and outline of the fair original, her fairy stepping, her aërial motions, became too soon well known, yet the features which that envious veil concealed were never but dimly seen, half shrouded, half revealed, pale in the moon's uncertain light, dark under the shadows of the monumental cypress. In the stolen and dangerous interviews which followed the first accidental meeting, amidst scenes of silence, mystery, and death, that face was never fully revealed. Oh! there was in that sweet, pure, and short lived communion, a fanciful and unearthly charm, which I have often since vainly sought. It was associated with scenes impressive on the imagination: it was pure as a spirit's love: no sordid view or selfish feeling polluted the bright spring of genuine

passion. I was loved for myself; nor knew I the name of my concealed mistress, save that which the church had given her-the Sister Benedicta."

"Then you wooed, and won this mysterious saint?" asked the Commodore, impatiently. "Wooed! yes; wooed, and weaned the soul of this consecrated being from her heavenly spouse, 'her spouse in vain;' but my conquest stopped there. I proposed to carry my young novice to South America; and in some of the Eden clifts of the cloud-embosomed Cordelliras to lead with her that blessed life of free unfettered passion, which nature dictated to the first created pair. Pride, bigotry, which she doubtless dignified with the name of virtue, triumphed over love. We parted: I found her innocent, I left her so; I found her happy too, at least contented and deceived; and it is not long since I ordered a Spanish friend to raise a cenotaph to her memory, in the cemetery of her

convent, with this device-A lily fading beneath a sun-beam; and with this motto 'Sic me Phœbus amat.”

"You know then that she died, and think 'twas of a broken heart?" asked his auditor.

"I cannot doubt it; though I have never heard from the friend to whom I trusted my sad commission; and to tell you the truth, the conviction still haunts my imagination, with a melancholy force, that grows with what it feeds on."

"Oh! your imagination!" repeated the Commodore, significantly, as he returned the box.

"Yes," continued the narrator; "and in sketching the story, which I have given to the world anonimously, the description of her death-bed scene almost drove me mad.”

A short wild laugh now rang through the ruins, as if some malignant fiend had formed a part of the audience, and