that my abode under your roof would not be incompatible with nocturnal visits to the Villa Foscari, and I became your guest. My interviews with Laura have been more frequent in this quiet and rural district, than in the narrow streets and numerous obstacles of Venice. The wide extent of her father's garden enables me to scale the wall unperceived, and to reach a garden saloon communicating by a covered trellice walk with the villa. Laura's abhorrence of the presuming and insolent Barozzo has proved a powerful auxiliary to my renewed entreaties that she would fly with me from the miseries which menace her, and I have recently succeeded in obtaining her reluctant consent to accompany me to Genoa, and from thence to Greece. A fortnight hence is appointed for the celebration of her marriage to the wretch who basely wooes her, with a consciousness of her unqualified antipathy to his person and character. If the strong attachment of Laura to her mother does not again baffle my hopes, we shall effect our escape three days before the one appointed for her marriage with Barozzo; but I can discern too well, through her invincible dejection, that she is still balancing the dreadful alternatives of a marriage abhorrent to her feelings, and the abandonment of her mother." Such was the tale of Colonna's brief, but trying and calamitous career. Deeply as I lamented his approaching departure, I felt too much interested in his success to withhold my active co-operation, and I pledged myself to promote his views as far as I could, without openly compromising myself with the Foscari family; but I entreated him to relinquish his design of painting the portraits of Laura and Barozzo, from an apprehension that a lover so fervent and demonstrative would, in some unguarded moment, excite suspicion, and frustrate the accomplishment of his ultimate views. He thanked me for the ready zeal with which I had entered into his feelings, and assured me that he had no intention of proceeding beyond the outlines of the governor's portrait; but that, as a lover and an artist, he could not deny himself the gratification of portraying the matchless form and features of the woman he adored. The day was declining when we quitted our cool retreat to ascend the mountain behind us, and inhale the pure breezes which played around its summit. We gazed with long and lingering delight upon the bright landscapes of Lombardy, as they glowed beneath us in the parting sunbeams, and the shades of night were fast falling around us when we crossed the lake on our return to the villa. CHAPTER IV.