CHAPTER VIII.
As Violante thus sate, a stranger, passing stealthily through the trees, stood between herself and the evening sun. She saw him not. He paused a moment, and then spoke low, in her native tongue, addressing her by the name which she had borne in Italy. He spoke as a relation, and excused his intrusion: “For,” said he, “I come to suggest to the daughter the means by which she can restore to her father his country and his honours.”
At the word “father” Violante roused herself, and all her love for that father rushed back upon her with double force. It does so ever—we love most our parents at the moment when some tie less holy is abruptly broken; and when the conscience says, “There, at least, is a love that never has deceived thee!”
She saw before her a man of mild aspect and princely form. Peschiera (for it was he) had banished from his dress, as from his countenance, all that betrayed the worldly levity of his character. He was acting a part, and he dressed and looked it.
“My father!” she said quickly, and in Italian. “What of him? And who are you, signior? I know you not.”
Peschiera smiled benignly, and replied in a tone in which great respect was softened by a kind of parental tenderness.
“Suffer me to explain, and listen to me while I speak.” Then, quietly seating himself on the bench beside her, he looked into her eyes, and resumed.
“Doubtless, you have heard of the Count di Peschiera?”
Violante.—“I heard that name, as a child, when in Italy. And when she with whom I then dwelt, (my father’s aunt,) fell ill and died, I was told that my home in Italy was gone, that it had passed to the Count di Peschiera—my father’s foe.”
Peschiera.—“And your father, since then, has taught you to hate this fancied foe?”