The month was expiring at Vallambrosa, but I had not mingled, for that length of time, with a fraternity of thoughtful men, without recognition of some of that working of spontaneous and elective magnetism to which I have alluded in a previous part of this story. Opposite me, at the table of the convent refectory, had sat a taciturn monk, whose influence I felt from the first day--a stronger consciousness of his presence, that is to say, than of any one of the other monks--though he did not seem particularly to observe me, and till recently had scarce spoken to me at all. He was a man of perhaps fifty years of age, with the countenance of one who had suffered and gained a victory of contemplation--a look as if no suffering could be new to him, and before whom no riddle of human vicissitudes could stay unread; but over all this penetration and sagacity was diffused a cast of genial philanthropy and good-fellowship which told of his forgiveness of the world for what he had suffered in it. With a curiosity more at leisure, I should have sought him out, and joined him in his walks to know more of him; but spiritually acquainted though I felt we had become, I was far too busy with head and heart for any intercourse, except it had a bearing on the struggle for love that I was, to all appearance, so hopelessly making. Preparations were beginning for departure, and with the morrow, or the day after, I was to take my way to Venice--my friends bound to Switzerland and England, and propriety not permitting me to seek another move in their company. The evening on which this was made clear to me, was one of those continuations of day into night made by the brightness of a full Italian moon; and Palgray, whose face, troubled, for the first time, betrayed to me that he was at a crisis of his fate with Stephania, evidently looked forward to this glowing night as the favorable atmosphere in which he might urge his suit, with nature pleading in his behalf. The reluctance and evident irresolution of his daughter puzzled Mr. Wangrave--for he had no doubt that she loved Palgray, and his education of her head and heart gave him no clue to any principle of coquettishness, or willingness to give pain, for the pleasure of an exercise of power. Her mother, and all the members of the party, were aware of the mystery that hung over the suit of the young guardsman, but they were all alike discreet, while distressed, and confined their interference to the removal of obstacles in the way of the lovers being together, and the avoidance of any topics gay enough to change the key of her spirits from the natural softness of the evening.