But though she cannot draw him to her embrace, Matilda La Contessa gains a gradually growing influence over the Count by 'her siren illusions and well-timed blandishments.' Soothing him in his wilder moods, cheering him in his dejection, Matilda di Laurentini diverts him with piquant speech, fascinates him with the music of her harp and voice, and animates him with the society she attracts to her salon. Playing the part of his ministering angel, she conceals from Verezzi the real nature of the passion, whose fierceness and animality would revolt him. 'Her breast,' the reader is told, 'heaved violently, her dark eyes, in expressive glances, told the fierce passions of her soul; yet, sensible of the necessity of controlling her emotions, she leaned her head upon her hand, and when she answered Verezzi, a calmness, a melting expression overspread her features. She conjured him, in the most tender, the most soothing terms, to compose himself; and, though Julia was gone for ever, to remember that there was yet one in the world, one tender friend, who could render the burden of life less unsupportable.' At length joy comes to this tender friend, whose demeanour is so mild and conciliatory to the Count Verezzi, though, in his absence, her bosom often heaves violently, whilst her dark and lustrous eyes emit glances, eloquent of the soul's fiercest passion. Matilda La Contessa di Laurentini, and her idolized Count, have journeyed from Passau to yet another of her stately homes,--the Castella di Laurentini, standing in a gloomy and remote spot of the Venetian territory; a palace surrounded by a darksome forest, and lofty mountains that 'lift their aspiring and craggy summits to the skies,'--when the lady achieves her purpose by a melodramatic stratagem. To win the Count, she is admonished by Zastrozzi to 'dare the dagger's point,' and is, at the same time, instructed by her counsellor _how_ to dare it. In accordance with the instructions, Matilda La Contessa leads Verezzi to a convenient spot of her picturesque demesne--a spot where, on the right hand, the thick umbrage of forest trees would render indistinguishable any person lurking about; whilst on the left, there yawns a frightful precipice, at whose base a deafening cataract dashes with tumultuous violence around misshapen and enormous masses of rock, lying at the foot of the gigantic and blackened mountain, which rears its craggy summit to the skies.