Frightened at that threat, Blanche, with a deprecating look, drew her stool quietly near me, as if to place her two protégés in an atmosphere mesmerised to matrimonial attractions; and my mother set hard to work--at a new frock for the baby. Unsoftened by these undue female influences, Pisistratus wrote on at the dictation of the relentless Fates. His pen was of iron, and his heart was of granite. He was as insensible to the existence of wife and baby as if he had never paid a house bill, nor rushed from a nursery at the sound of an infant squall. O blessed privilege of Authorship! "O testudinis aureæ Dulcem quæ strepitum, Pieri, temperas! O mutis quoque piscibus Donatura cycni, si libeat, sonum!" CHAPTER II. It is necessary to go somewhat back in the course of this narrative, and account to the reader for the disappearance of Violante. It may be remembered that Peschiera, scared by the sudden approach of Lord L'Estrange, had little time for farther words to the young Italian, than those which expressed his intention to renew the conference, and press for her decision. But, the next day, when he re-entered the garden, secretly and stealthily as before, Violante did not appear. And after watching round the precincts till dusk, the Count retreated with an indignant conviction that his arts had failed to enlist on his side, either the heart or the imagination of his intended victim. He began now to revolve, and to discuss with Levy, the possibilities of one of those bold and violent measures, which were favored by his reckless daring, and desperate condition. But Levy treated with such just ridicule any suggestion to abstract Violante by force from Lord Lansmere's house--so scouted the notions of nocturnal assault, with the devices of scaling windows and rope-ladders--that the Count reluctantly abandoned that romance of villainy so unsuited to our sober capital, and which would no doubt have terminated in his capture by the police, with the prospect of committal to the House of Correction. Levy himself found his invention at fault, and Randal Leslie was called into consultation. The usurer had contrived that Randal's schemes of fortune and advancement were so based upon Levy's aid and connivance, that the young man, with all his desire rather to make instruments of other men, than to be himself their instrument, found his superior intellect as completely a slave to Levy's more experienced craft, as ever subtle Genius of air was subject to the vulgar Sorcerer of earth. His acquisition of the ancestral acres--his anticipated seat in parliament--his chance of ousting Frank from the heritage of Hazeldean--were all as strings that pulled him to and fro, like a puppet in the sleek filbert-nailed fingers of the smiling showman, who could exhibit him to the admiration of a crowd, or cast him away into dust and lumber.