"For God's sake, signora, do not summon any one! You have nothing to fear from me—indeed you have not."
"Giosué, is it only you?" said the young lady, with a tone of undisguised reproach and vexation. There was a pause.
The unwelcome visitor was a young man about six-and-twenty, whose dress announced his occupation and rank in life to be somewhat dubious; but his air, though constrained in the presence of Dianora, had a dash of gallant and graceful recklessness in it. He wore the brigand garb, which had then become a kind of uniform adopted by all desperadoes; he had a carbine in his hand, and a knife and four long iron pistols were stuck in a yellow silk sash. A loose velvet jacket, knee breeches, and gaiters crossed with red leather straps, displayed to advantage his fine athletic figure; and round his open neck hung a little bag containing a charm, which he supposed rendered him bullet-proof. A large, shapeless, and battered Calabrian hat, with a royalist red riband flaunting from it, shaded his face; which was fringed with a black and untrimmed beard, and presented a kind of savage beauty: though squalid through want, and fierce in its expression; being marked with the lines of the worst passions. The young girl regarded him with a glance expressive equally of timidity and pity.
"Dianora—Dianora!" said he, reproachfully, but mildly; "there was a time when you were not wont to pronounce my name in such a tone. Alas! sweet cousin—like myself, its very sound seems changed."
"Poor Giosué!" she began.
"Was not expected here to-night," said he, bitterly. "No; you await another. Cattivo! I know it."
He regarded her gloomily; his fierce dark eyes sparkling in the twilight like those of a basilisk; and she, who but a moment before had been all eagerness for the arrival of Oliver Lascelles, now mentally implored Heaven that he might not come that night, for something dreadful would certainly ensue.
"Dianora," said the young man, "is it true what they tell me—that you love this stranger?"
"As I never can love thee, Giosué," replied the girl, with timid energy.
"Malediction! Have you forgotten how you once swore your hand should be mine?"