“He then retired to sleep, and the evening was passed by the priest and Don Fernan, in profound silence at their chess--by Donna Clara, in silence equally profound, at her tapestry--and by Isidora at the casement, which the intolerable heat had compelled them to leave open, in gazing at the lustre of the moon, and inhaling the odour of the tube-rose, and watching the expanding leaves of the night-blowing cereus. The physical luxuries of her former existence seemed renewed by these objects. The intense blue of the heavens, and the burning planet that stood in sole glory in their centre, might have vied with all that lavish and refulgent opulence of light in which nature arrays an Indian night. Below, too, there were flowers and fragrance; colours, like veiled beauty, mellowed, not hid; and dews that hung on every leaf, trembling and sparkling like the tears of spirits, that wept to take leave of the flowers. “The breeze, indeed, though redolent of the breath of the orange blossom, the jasmine, and the rose, had not the rich and balmy odour that scents the Indian air by night. Ενθα νησον μακαρων Αυραι περιπνεουσιν. “Except this, what was not there that might not renew the delicious dream of her former existence, and make her believe herself again the queen of that fairy isle?--One image was wanting--an image whose absence made that paradise of islands, and all the odorous and flowery luxury of a moonlight garden in Spain, alike deserts to her. In her heart alone could she hope to meet that image,--to herself alone did she dare to repeat his name, and those wild and sweet songs of his country(20) which he had taught her in his happier moods. And so strange was the contrast between her former and present existence,--so subdued was she by constraint and coldness,--so often had she been told that every thing she did, said, or thought, was wrong,--that she began to yield up the evidences of her senses, to avoid the perpetual persecutions of teazing and imperious mediocrity, and considered the appearance of the stranger as one of those visions that formed the trouble and joy of her dreamy and illusive existence. (20) Ireland.