This state of things lasted but a few months, however, when suddenly a new change came over the beautiful girl. She had been studying hard and diligently, and strange books fell into her hands. It seemed as if from intellectual culture, new sources of happiness became opened to her. It might, indeed, be that pride came to her aid--that she resolved to cast away all thoughts of a man she deemed unworthy of her. It might be that she sought to cheer and solace her father. And yet there must have been something more, some stronger power at work within, for she showed that she was not one of those "to love again and be again deceived." Oh, no, she would not hear the very name of love. The gayest, the brightest, the noblest, the most handsome strove for one smile, one token of her favour, but in vain. Yet she came forth from her solitude--she became the star of her father's little court. Amid admiring eyes and looks that seemed almost to worship her, she moved in beauty, but as cold as ice. Colour came back to her cheek, light to her eye, roundness and symmetry to every limb. The sweet, arching lips regained all their redness, but the heart seemed to have lost its warmth for ever. The tenderness of the young girl, too, had apparently gone--the timidity, the shyness of youth. Not that she was hard, unkind, or harsh--oh, far from it. She was an angel of mercy in that city of Imola. She pleaded for the prisoner, turned often aside the blow from those appointed to die, solaced the sick and the needy. Her own great wealth, left solely to her disposal, raised up many a drooping head, cheered many a despairing heart. But now she dared to do what she would have shrunk from in the years passed by. She would approach her father, fearless, in his sternest moods, entreat, argue, remonstrate, and often, by the power of her will, bend him from his most settled purposes. Her beauty had acquired something of the character which her mind now assumed, and it must have been now that those pictures we have of her were taken. Though it was of the finest, the most delicate, the most exquisitely engaging style both in line and colouring, there was a dignity in the expression and in the whole air which the canvas can but faintly convey; and yet who could gaze upon her eyes, those wells of light, without seeing that there was some marvellous self-sustaining power within.