He was awake, and was indignant at the affront put on him. He was awake, for he had sworn to be avenged. Thinking that he understood the meaning of Gaetano's words, he did not doubt but that they had made a _rendezvous_ for that very night. This rendezvous was not the first, for Maulear knew the secret of the veil he had found on the terrace on the first night he had passed at Sorrento. The veil belonged to Aminta, and the flitting shadow he had seen was the lady's self. Her accomplice was Gaetano. How could he doubt? Interrupted in their first intercourse by Maulear, they expected on another occasion to be more fortunate. No, cried he, that shall not be, they will find me between themselves and happiness. I wish them to at least learn, that I am not their dupe. I will cover her snowy brow with a blush, and avenge myself by disclosing to her my knowledge of her secret. But how could he surprise them? Would they dare to cross the terrace again? Perhaps, though, they can meet nowhere else. If so, they will brave every thing, and in that case I must not alarm them. The Marquis took the taper, which lighted his chamber, and placed it in a back room, which opened on the interior corridor of the house. Carefully opening the terrace window, he took refuge behind a group of trees, exactly opposite his room. The clock of Sorrento struck three--the night was clear and brilliant, and the sky was strewn with diamond stars--the air was soft and warm. It was a night for love and lovers. To Maulear it was a night of agony and torture. All around was so calm and tranquil that the slightest noise fell on his ear,--he soon heard a door open. Maulear fixed his eyes on the point of the terrace from which the sound proceeded--his whole existence seemed concentrated in the single sense of sight. Something cloudlike, vapory and undefinable, which seemed too ethereal for earth, gradually appeared at the extreme end of the terrace. This mysterious figure seemed to glide, rather than walk, towards the place where Maulear was concealed; it approached him slowly, without motion or sound to betray its steps. Wrapped in long white drapery, like a mantle of vapor, resembling those creations of Ossian which formed often the clouds of evening; in short, one might have believed that she had risen from the earth, and had come to dissolve under the first rays of the sun, or of the moon. The phantom disappeared for a few seconds, amidst a dark grove, which projected on the terrace the lofty trunks of large forest trees--but when she emerged from their shade, and re-entered that portion of the terrace light and brilliant, she approached so near to Maulear, that he was enabled to examine and recognize her.