The Count had been received by Aminta, in the early months of her widowhood, but he had refrained, from respectful motives, to allude to his feelings. His visits to the Marquise were short and ceremonious, feeling that love should not be veiled by the crape of mourning. Like the Prince de Maulear, and all Paris in fact, Aminta had heard of the Count's misfortune, and the blow made a deep impression on her. The absence of the Count became prolonged. He had not visited her since his misfortune, and she could not but feel a deep interest for him to whom fate reserved such severe trials. One evening, when she was more melancholy than usual, and sat in the saloon with her head leaning on her hand, and dreaming over the incidents of her life in which Monte-Leone had figured, she thought without remorse of scenes it had been once her duty to forget. A stifled sigh escaped from her bosom, and a kind of moan near her induced her to shake off her reverie. She saw Scorpione lying at her feet as he used to, and looking fixedly and sadly at her. Tonio, whom, like the children of Sorrento, we have often called Scorpione, after having wandered along the sea-shore at the time of Aminta's marriage, had been found exhausted on the sands, and been taken to Signora Rovero, on the very day that Aminta set out for France. Since then, vegetating rather than living with the mother of Aminta, Signora Rovero was unwilling to trust her daughter's preserver to servants, when she heard of the death of her son-in-law. Signora Rovero had such delicate health as to be unable to bear the climate of Paris, and had six months before returned to Italy; but Tonio was unwilling to leave her, and yielding to his mute prayers, Aminta had consented for him to remain, for his sufferings to save her had made a deep impression on her. Tonio was in fact but the shadow of himself, the soul alone seeming to support him. Even his soul was changed. Fearful and timid when with Aminta, the passion the unfortunate boy had once experienced for her became humble and respectful submission. His very mind became extinct; and the only glimmerings of it now seemed to be a kind of instinctive sympathy with his mistress. He smiled when the Marquise did, and that was but rarely. He wept when tears hung on her eyelids. When he looked as we have described at Aminta, her sadness was perfectly mirrored on his face. Scorpione was, in fact, less than man, and more than a brute--he was an idiot. "You suffer, because I suffer," said Aminta. He replied, "Yes." By one of those ideas which take possession of the time, but which it shrinks to confess, she said in a weak and almost tender voice to the idiot, as children do to toys, "If I were happy, would you be?" Scorpione looked fixedly at her, as if trying to understand her; and she added, "If any one loved me, and I loved him also, would you wish me to be happy?" blushing as she spoke.