“Well, well! it is over; and in sooth, she carried it nobly for one so young; but that pride shall have a fall, my haughty beauty,—and that stripling Antonio, too—by the cross! to be outwitted, circumvented, thus—that he should step in and pluck the fruit I had coveted so long. Most excellent Constantine! truly thy wits have grown sharp of late to be thus miserably foiled by a beardless boy, and thine own egregious self conceit.—Fool! fool!” He paused for an instant, and a demoniac scowl passed across his features. “Ay, revenge——and she shall kneel to me even as I knelt to her, and pray to me in her agony and I will not hear her. Wo to those who would trifle with the proffers of Constantine.”
That night he disappeared from the island, and his absence excited little remark and less regret. Of his history scarcely any thing was known; but the mystery with which he chose to envelope his early days, his unbounded prodigality of wealth, and the recklessness of his character, gave rise to a strong suspicion, that his life had been one of desperate and unlawful courses.
And who was she against whom that fearful malediction had been uttered? A gentle spiritual being, unfit for the stormy waves on which she had been cast, destined to struggle with difficulty against them, and perhaps, ere long, to float away on the wilderness of waters, a withered and a broken thing. Surrounded with all that wealth could bring, she had grown up, shadowed from the gaze of the world, beautiful and accomplished in person, but still more lovely, if possible, in her intellectual being. To her the literature of the present and the past were unfolded, and she drank deeply of all that is high or impassioned therein. But most she loved to dwell upon the records of her country, and her young blood would thrill as she read of the ancient glory of her people, of their triumphs in arts and arms, of their bards, and warriors, and sages, and she wept when she beheld the degeneracy of their descendants. The beautiful in nature “haunted her like a passion.” She loved the Egean and its isles and the blue sky above them, because they were beautiful themselves, but still more because antiquity had hallowed them. And she was wont to steal away from her companions, and in some shady nook made pleasant by the dashing of a mountain rivulet, to read the stories of the ‘olden time,’ till consciousness stole from her and she lived and moved an actor in the scene. On one thus constituted, the first tidings of the revolt struck like an electric shock. The day-dream of her existence seemed to be on the eve of its accomplishment. Already, in imagination, she saw the chains falling from her nation, and Greece, with her bright coronet of isles, smiling in her recovered independence and happiness. She saw the ruined temples and altars reconstructed, and the statues of the renowned of old, restored to their long deserted niches. She lamented that she too might not grasp the lance and wield the sword. But all the interest of an actual combatant was hers. Her soul was with Niketas, among the passes of the Morea, with Miaulis and Canaris in their desperate engagements by sea, and her prayers were daily with God, that he would crown their efforts with success. She mingled no longer in the song or dance, she was no longer seen in the masque or revel of the festival—a high and holy enthusiasm filled her soul, and
“The boon that nature gave her at her birth,
Her own original gaiety of heart”
was gone. As a mother watches with intense solicitude, the varying pulses of a dying child, so did Zara watch the rising and sinking fortunes of the cause to which she had bound her happiness forever.
It was the night on which commences our story, and Zara is gazing out upon the sea, and the evening breeze that comes in through the lattice, lifts her dark hair and caresses her cheek, as if conscious of the beauty around which it played. The scene through which she had passed, and which had resulted so bitterly to one, had vanished entirely from her mind. The stars were looking down from an unclouded sky, and the waves made music as they broke upon the shore, but both were equally unmarked by her. She thought of her lover beyond the sea, she watched him in all the hazards of a fierce contest, she heard his voice, nerving with confidence his fainting friends and sending dismay into the ranks of the enemy. She saw him driving the Moslem before him, now he is among the thickest of the foe, he struggles valiantly, the infidels hem him in on every side, Holy Virgin preserve him, he is down!—she was suddenly aroused from her painful thoughts. A light boat, containing a single individual, shot rapidly round a curve of the shore, and glided into the dark, smooth water of the little bay that lay beneath her window. A moment after a rich, manly voice rose gaily on the air:—
Lady, from thy lofty bower
Look not out so tearfully,
Lady know, this joyous hour,
From beyond the star-lit sea
Brings thy lover back to thee,
Brings him, love, to life and thee!
That voice! it was Antonio’s—a moment more and she is in his arms.
“Ah recreant!” said she, smiling fondly upon him, “is this your boasted patriotism? What sends you from your post in the hour of danger?”
“Can you ask, Zara, and do you forget, that it is a whole year, an age since I have seen you?”