“You hear?” said Mariuccia to her sister. “I told you you were mistaken—that it was not he.”
“It is strange,” said Teresina. “At all events, it was some one who resembled him very much. It is true, I barely saw him a second.”
“And where was it?” I asked with a slight tremor of the heart.
“At the window of a small villa away from the road at the end of a masseria[56] we happened to pass on the way.”
She was mistaken, it was evident; but when Lorenzo returned that evening, [pg 213] a day sooner than I expected, I felt a slight misgiving at seeing him. He perceived it, and smilingly asked if I was sorry because he had hastened his return. I was tempted to tell him what troubled me, but was ashamed of the new suspicion such an explanation would have revealed, and I reproached myself for it as an injustice to him. I checked myself, therefore, and forced myself to forget, or at least to pay no attention to, the gossip of my cousins.
To Be Continued.
Fac-Similes Of Irish National Manuscripts. Concluded.
The Liber Hymnorum is the next selected. It is believed to be more than one thousand years old, and one of the most remarkable of the sacred tracts among the MSS. in Trinity College, Dublin. It is a collection of hymns on S. Patrick and other Irish saints, which has been published by the Irish Archæological and Celtic Society, under the superintendence of Dr. Todd. The three pages selected contain the hymn written by S. Fiach of Stetty, between the years 538 and 558, in honor of S. Patrick. The hymn is furnished with an interlinear gloss.
The tenth of these MSS. is The Saltair of S. Ricemarch, Bishop of St. David's between the years 1085 and 1096, a small copy of the Psalter containing also a copy of the Roman Martyrology.