She was to give but three representations at Venice, and ere Cashel's party had arrived all the tickets were already disposed of. By unceasing efforts, and considerable bribery, they contrived at last to obtain places for the first night, and early in the forenoon were admitted among a privileged number to take their seats. They who were thus, at a heavy cost, permitted to anticipate the general public, seemed--at least to Cashel's eyes--to fill the house; and so, in the dim indistinctness, they appeared. Wherever the eye turned, from the dark parterre below, to the highest boxes above, seemed filled with people. There was something almost solemn in that vast concourse, who sat subdued and silent in the misty half light of the theatre. The intense anxiety of expectation, the dreary gloom of the scene, contributed to spread a kind of awestruck influence around, and brought up to Roland's memory a very different place and occasion--when, himself the observed of all observers, he stood in the felons' dock. Lost in the gloomy revery these sad thoughts suggested, he took no note of time, nor marked the lagging hours which stole heavily past. Suddenly the full glare of light burst forth, and displayed the great theatre crowded in every part. That glittering spectacle, into which beauty, splendor of dress, jewels, and rich uniforms enter, broke upon the sight, while a kind of magnetic sense of expectancy seemed to pervade all, and make conversation a mere murmur. The opera--a well-known one of a favorite composer, aud admirably sustained--attracted little attention. The thrilling cadences, the brilliant passages, all fell upon senses that had no relish for their excellence; and even the conventional good-breeding of the spectators was not proof against the signs of impatience that every now and then were manifested.