disconsolate woman in the world, for having lost her hopes of _Brilliard_, to whom she had engaged all that honour she had. But when she missed her lady there, she accused herself with all the falsehood in the world, and fell to repent her treachery. She sends the page to inquire at _Octavio_’. house, but no body there could give him any intelligence; so that the poor amorous youth returning without hope, endured all the pain of a hopeless lover; for _Octavio_ had anew charmed his coachman: and calling up an ancient woman who was his house-keeper, who had been his nurse, he acquainted her with the short history of his passion for _Sylvia_, and ordered her to give her attendance on the treasure of his life; he bid her prepare all things as magnificent as she could in that apartment he designed her, which was very rich and gay, and towards a fine garden. The hangings and beds all glorious, and fitter for a monarch than a subject; the finest pictures the world afforded, flowers in-laid with silver and ivory, gilded roofs, carved wainscot, tables of plate, with all the rest of the movables in the chambers of the same, all of great value, and all was perfumed like an altar, or the marriage bed of some young king. Here _Sylvia_ was designed to lodge, and hither _Octavio_ conducted her; and setting her on a couch while the supper was getting ready, he sits himself down by her, and his heart being ready to burst with grief, at the thought of the claim which was laid to her by _Brilliard_, he silently views her, while tears were ready to break from his fixed eyes, and sighs stopped what he would fain have spoke; while she (wholly confounded with shame, guilt, and disappointment, for she could not imagine that _Brilliard_ could have had the impudence to have claimed her for a wife) fixed her fair eyes to the earth, and durst not behold the languishing _Octavio_. They remained thus a long time silent, she not daring to defend herself from a crime, of which she knew too well she was guilty, nor he daring to ask her a question to which the answer might prove so fatal; he fears to know what he dies to be satisfied in, and she fears to discover too late a secret, which was the only one she had concealed from him. _Octavio_ runs over in his mind a thousand thoughts that perplex him, of the probability of her being married; he considers how often he had found her with that happy young man, who more freely entertained her than servants use to do. He now considers how he had seen them once on a bed together, when _Sylvia_ was in the disorder of a yielding mistress, and _Brilliard_ of a ravished lover; he considers how he has found them alone at cards and dice, and often entertaining her with freedoms of a husband, and how he wholly managed her affairs, commanded her servants like their proper master, and was in full authority of all. These, and a thousand more circumstances, confirm _Octavio_ in all his fears: a thousand times she is about to speak,