Eve saw Alonzo come, disguised as a hunter, having abandoned his father, his rank, his prospects, for love of Preciosa. Was not this like Martin?—Martin the heroic, the self-sacrificing man who rushed into peril that he might be at her feet—Martin, now laid up with rheumatism for her sake. She saw the gipsies assemble, their tents were taken down, bales were collected, all was prepared for departure. Alonzo was taken into the band and fellowship was sworn. The moon had set, but see—what is this? A red light smites betwixt the trees and kindles the trunks orange and scarlet, the rocks are also flushed, and simultaneously with a burst, joyous, triumphant, the whole band sing the chorus of salutation to the rising sun. Preciosa is exalted on a litter and is borne on the shoulders of the gipsies. The light brightens, the red blaze pervades, transforms the entire scene, bathes every actor in fire; the glorious song swells and thrills every heart, and suddenly, when it seemed to Eve that she could bear no more, the curtain fell. She sprang to her feet, unconscious of everything but what she had seen and heard, and the whole house rose with her and roared its applause and craved for more. It is unnecessary for us to follow Eve’s emotions through the entire drama, and to narrate the plot, to say how that the gipsies arrive at the castle of Don Fernando where he is celebrating his silver wedding, how his son Eugenio, by an impertinence offered to Preciosa, exasperates the disguised Alonzo into striking him, and is arrested, how Preciosa intercedes, and how it is discovered that she is the daughter of Don Fernando, stolen seventeen years before. The reader may possibly know the drama; if he does not, his loss is not much; it is a drama of little merit and no originality, which would never have lived had not Weber furnished it with a few scraps of incomparably beautiful music. The curtain fell, the orchestra departed, the boxes were emptying. All those in the stalls around Eve were in movement. She gave a long sigh and woke out of her dream, looked round at Jasper, then at Mr. Coyshe, and smiled; her eyes were dazed, she was not fully awake. ‘Very decent performance,’ said the surgeon, ‘but we shall see something better in London.’ ‘Well, Eve,’ said Jasper, ‘are you ready? I will ask for the manager, and then we must be pushing home.’ ‘Home!’ repeated Eve, and repeated it questioningly. ‘Yes,’ answered Jasper, ‘have you forgotten the row up the river and the ride before us?’ She put her hand to her head. ‘Oh, Jasper,’ she said, ‘I feel as if I were at home now—here, where I ought always to have been, and was going again into banishment.’ CHAPTER XLVII. NOAH’S ARK.