“From Carlotta he had rarely heard, but he knew her heart was his, and he had that faith in her character as a true woman, which made him believe that no entreaties or commands of her father would induce her to wed another. And Paul was right—Carlotta D. still remained unmarried. In her the budding loveliness of the girl had expanded into the fuller beauty of the woman, but Talbot was sadly altered. The feverish excitement—the continued toil—the broken rest—the anxiety of thought to which he had been subjected, undermined his health, and planted the seeds of that insidious disease, which, while it wastes the bodily strength, leaves the mind unimpaired, and the hope of the sufferer buoyed to the last. The father of Carlotta finding that neither persuasion nor coercion could make his high-souled daughter barter her love for a title, consented at last that she should become the bride of the artist; but many said the wily Florentine had given his consent the more readily, because he saw that Paul would not long be a barrier in the way of his ambition. “Paul Talbot had buffeted the adverse waves of fortune; he had gained renown in a land filled with the most exquisite creations of the gifted; he had won a promised bride. Whence, in that bright hour loomed the one dark cloud that blotted the stars from the sky? Could it be the shadow of the tomb? Was death interweaving his gloomy cypress with the laurel on the painter’s brow? Oh, no, no—he was but weary—he only wanted rest, and his powers would again be in full vigor. Then, with Carlotta at his side—with her smile to cheer him on—he would aim higher, and yet higher in his art. “And the young wife was deceived. Although a nameless dread, a dark prescience lay heavy at her heart, she yet thought the bright flush on the cheek of Paul a sign of returning health. How tenderly and anxiously she watched lest he should fatigue himself at his easel, and how gently she chid, and lured him from his task into the open air of their beautiful garden.