to the young Italian, and he had been a frequent visitor there up to the time of Zuleika's departure for the convent school.

In the interval both the Viscount and the girl had become much attached to each other, and then this mutual attachment had rapidly ripened into mutual love of that ardor and intensity experienced only by children of the southern or oriental sun. Young Massetti had avowed his passion to his beautiful charmer, and the avowal had not caused her displeasure; it was, on the contrary, exceedingly agreeable to her and she did not seek to conceal the fact from her enthusiastic suitor.

The momentous interview took place in a densely shaded alley of the garden of the Palazzo Costi one sultry afternoon of the early autumn. The youthful couple were seated very near each other upon a rustic bench. Massetti held Zuleika's small, soft hand in his and the electric touch of her tiny and shapely fingers thrilled him as the touch of female fingers had never thrilled him before. He gazed into the liquid depths of her dark, glowing eyes and their subtile fire seemed to melt his very soul. The close, sultry atmosphere, laden with heavy, intoxicating perfumes, was fraught with a delirious influence well calculated to set the blood aflame and promote the explosion of pent-up love. The thick, green foliage enclosed the pair as in a verdant cloud, effectually concealing them from observation. The opportunity was irresistible. Giovanni drew closer to his fascinating companion, so closely that her fragrant breath came full in his face, utterly subjecting him and totally obliterating all caution, everything save his absorbing passion for the palpitating girl whose slight, but clear-cut form, gracefully-outlined beneath her flowing, half-oriental garments, touched his. Suddenly carried away by a powerful transport, he threw his arm around the young girl's yielding waist and drew her without resistance upon his bosom, where she lay, gazing up into his flushed, excited countenance with an indescribable, voluptuous charm, mingled with thorough confidence and unhesitating innocence. Panting in his clasp, her ruby lips partly opened as if for breath, and the ardent Italian hastily, recklessly imprinted a fiery kiss upon them. Zuleika, with an almost imperceptible movement, returned this chaste, but ravishing salute.

"Oh! how I love you!" murmured Giovanni, quivering from head to foot in his wild ecstasy, and clasping the lovely girl still tighter.

She made no verbal response, but did not stir, did not strive to extricate herself from his warm embrace This was a sufficient answer for the quick Italian. Zuleika, the beautiful Zuleika, returned his love, favored his suit. His joy approached delirium.

"Oh! Zuleika," he whispered, gazing directly into her night black eyes, "you love me, I am sure! Give me the treasures of your virgin heart! Be mine—be my wife!"

"Oh! Giovanni," returned the quivering girl, in a low, but sweetly modulated voice, "I do love you—God alone knows how much!—but I am too young to be your wife! I am only a child, not yet out of school. My father would not hear of my marrying for several years to come. Can you not wait?"

"It will be a hard task, Zuleika," answered the young man, excitedly; "but, still, I will wait if you give me a lover's hope. Promise to marry me when you are at liberty to do so, nay, swear it, and I shall be satisfied!"

"I can neither promise nor swear it, Giovanni, without my father's approval and consent. He is a wise, experienced and thoughtful man, tender and mild to every one he loves, though hard and implacable to his enemies. Speak to him of me, of your love, of your wish. He will listen to you and he will not imperil his daughter's happiness. Go to him without delay, and rest assured that whatever he says or does will be for the best interests of us both."

She had released herself from his clasp and drawn slightly away from him, not in terror, not in prudery, not in coquetry, but as a measure of prudence. She felt intuitively that the wild, intense passion of her Italian adorer must be kept within discreet limits.

"I cannot speak to your father yet," replied Giovanni, hesitatingly. "He might listen to me, it is true; but he would treat our love as a mere childish fancy that time could not fail to dim, if not obliterate. I am deeply in earnest, Zuleika, and could not bear to be treated as a thoughtless, headlong stripling, who did not know his own mind. Ridicule, even in its mildest form, would fire my blood, fill me with mad projects of revenge. I prefer not to ask your father for your hand until certain of a favorable reception of my suit. You comprehend my scruples, do you not, Zuleika? I love you too dearly not to win you when I ask!"

"But you will speak to my father?" said the girl, in faltering tones.

"Yes, darling, oh! yes; but not until that hated convent school has ceased to oppose its barriers between us. When you have left it, when you have completed the education the Count designs for you, I will seek your father and ask you of him for my wife; until then, until I can with safety speak, at least promise me that you will love no other man, encourage no other suitor."

"That I will do," responded the girl, joyously. "Rest assured I will love no other man, encourage no other suitor!"

Unable to control himself, the Viscount again clasped the object of his adoration in his arms, and again their lips met in a long, passionate kiss of love.

So it was settled, and Zuleika went to the convent school of the Sacred Heart, feeling that her happiness was assured, but impatient of and dissatisfied with the long delay that must necessarily intervene before the realization of her hopes, the dawn of her woman's future.

The Viscount Massetti, though he had professed himself willing to wait, was, on his side, thoroughly discontented with the arduous task he had undertaken. It was one thing to make a rash promise in the heat of enthusiasm, but quite another to keep it, especially when that promise involved a separation from the lovely girl who had inextricably entwined herself about the fibres of his heart and was the sole guiding star of his life and love.

The convent school of the Sacred Heart was located in the convent of that Sisterhood, about three miles beyond the Porta del Popolo on the northern side of Rome. The convent was a spacious edifice, but gloomy and forbidding, with the aspect of a prison. Narrow, barred windows, like those of a dungeon of the middle ages, admitted the light from without, furnishing a dim, restricted illumination that gave but little evidence of the power and brilliancy of the orb of day. At night the faint, sepulchral blaze of candles only served to make the darkness palpable and more ghastly.

The huge school-room was as primitive and comfortless in its appointments and furniture as well could be. The walls were of dressed stone and loomed up bare and grisly to a lofty ceiling that was covered with a perfect labyrinth of curiously carved beams, the work of some unknown artist of long ago. The scholars' dormitories were narrow cell-like affairs, scantily furnished, in which every light must be extinguished at the hour of nine in the evening. Once admitted to the school, the pupils were not permitted to leave its precincts save at vacation or at the termination of their course of studies, a circumstance that heartily disgusted the gay, light-hearted Italian girls sent there to receive both mental and moral training. Another source of grave vexation to them was the regulation, already alluded to, that rigorously excluded all male visitors, with the exception of parents or guardians.

Attached to the convent was an extensive garden, full of huge