The song was very distant and passed slowly out of hearing. Yet it lingered and lingered. It haunted the moonlight; beseeching, yearning, wailing; a whole history singing and sighing in its measures; a whole history, at least, when a heart listened in which all passionate powers thrilled and throbbed in answer.
Maddalena turned from her window, and walked slowly up and down the chamber. She paused and loosened her dress. It fell away from her like a cloud, and around her in the dark of the chamber, the dim outline of the furniture was not more still than the statuesque repose of her form. A faint, heavy odor from a vase of flowers filled the room. She moved slowly away, and slowly seated herself upon the edge of the bed, resting her head upon her hand, and murmuring almost inaudibly, as if dreaming:
The Marquis di Sangrido waited until he supposed that his wife had reached her chamber. Then he passed quietly through another door to a farther part of the palace, and entering a room which he unlocked with a key that he took from his pocket, he closed and locked it carefully behind him; then opening the small door of a cupboard in the wall, he took from a shelf a large glass jar, full of a green liquor, which he carefully examined; then closed and locked the cupboard-door, and left the room. When he reached the dining-hall, he summoned his valet, and ordered him to assemble all the servants, who instantly came thronging in. After looking at them sternly for a few moments, the Marquis said:
"I wish you all to return to Rome at an early hour in the morning. I shall follow you two days hence. Vincenzo," he said to his valet, "you will remain."
As the servants were leaving the room, he said to them with a kind of hiss,
"If any man remains behind after to-morrow morning, he will never see Rome again."
And with a shudder of fear the servants withdrew.
By dawn the next morning, they had all left the palazzo, and at
