I used to notice, many times, that mistress was not quite recovered. She would cast down her eyes and droop her head, before the Signor Dellombra, or would look at him with a terrified and fascinated glance, as if his presence had some evil influence or power upon her. Turning from her to him, I used to see him in the shaded gardens, or the large half-lighted sala, looking, as I might say, ‘fixedly upon her out of darkness.’ But, truly, I had not forgotten la bella Carolina’s words describing the face in the dream. After his second visit I heard master say: ‘Now, see, my dear Clara, it’s over! Dellombra has come and gone, and your apprehension is broken like glass.’ ‘Will he—will he ever come again?’ asked mistress. ‘Again? Why, surely, over and over again! Are you cold?’ (she shivered). ‘No, dear—but—he terrifies me: are you sure that he need come again?’ ‘The surer for the question, Clara!’ replied master, cheerfully. But, he was very hopeful of her complete recovery now, and grew more and more so every day. She was beautiful. He was happy. ‘All goes well, Baptista?’ he would say to me again. ‘Yes, signore, thank God; very well.’ We were all (said the Genoese courier, constraining himself to speak a little louder), we were all at Rome for the Carnival. I had been out, all day, with a Sicilian, a friend of mine, and a courier, who was there with an English family. As I returned at night to our hotel, I met the little Carolina, who never stirred from home alone, running distractedly along the Corso. ‘Carolina! What’s the matter?’ ‘O Baptista! O, for the Lord’s sake! where is my mistress?’ ‘Mistress, Carolina?’ ‘Gone since morning—told me, when master went out on his day’s journey, not to call her, for she was tired with not resting in the night (having been in pain), and would lie in bed until the evening; then get up refreshed. She is gone!—she is gone! Master has come back, broken down the door, and she is gone! My beautiful, my good, my innocent mistress!’ The pretty little one so cried, and raved, and tore herself that I could not have held her, but for her swooning on my arm as if she had been shot. Master came up—in manner, face, or voice, no more the master that I knew, than I was he. He took me (I laid the little one upon her bed in the hotel, and left her with the chamber-women), in a carriage, furiously through the darkness, across the desolate Campagna. When it was day, and we stopped at a miserable post-house, all the horses had been hired twelve hours ago, and sent away in different directions. Mark me! by the Signor Dellombra, who had passed there in a carriage, with a frightened English lady crouching in one corner. I never heard (said the Genoese courier, drawing a long breath) that she was ever traced beyond that spot. All I know is, that she vanished into infamous oblivion, with the dreaded face beside her that she had seen in her dream. * * * * *