“Have I not told you that I shall not need forgiveness,--that with this act all ends between us?” “I will be no party to this,” said she, haughtily; and she arose and walked out upon the terrace. As she passed, the lamplight flared strongly on her features, and M'Caskey saw a face he had once known well; but what a change was there! The beautiful Nini Brancaleone, the dark-haired Norma, the belle that Byron used to toast with an enthusiasm of admiration, was a tall woman advanced in years, and with two masses of snow-white hair on either side of a pale face. The dark eyes, indeed, flashed brightly still, and the eyebrows were dark as of yore; but the beautifully formed mouth was hard and thin-lipped, and the fair brow marked with many a strong line of pain. “You forget, perhaps,” said she, after a short pause,--“you forget that it is from this villa I take my title. I am Brancaleone della Torricella, and I forfeit the name when it leaves our hands.” “And do you hold to this, mother?” asked he, in a voice of sorrow, through which something of scorn was detectable. “Do I hold to it? Of course I hold to it! You know well the value it has in his eyes. Without it he never would have consented--” She stopped suddenly, and seemed to catch herself in time to prevent the utterance of some rash avowal. “As it is,” added she, “he told me so late as yesterday that he has no rest nor peace, thinking over his brother's son, and the great wrong he has done him.” “Let him think of the greater wrong he has done me!--of my youth that he has wasted, and my manhood lost and shipwrecked. But for him and his weak ambition, I had belonged to a party who would have prized my ability and rewarded my courage. I would not find myself at thirty brigaded with a set of low-hearted priests and seminarists, who have no other weapons than treachery, nor any strategy but lies. If I have squandered his fortune, he has beggared me in reputation. He does not seem to remember these things. As to him whom he would prefer to me and make his heir, I have seen him.” “You have seen him, Norman! When?--where?--how?” cried she, in wild impatience. “Yes, I even had a plan to let the uncle meet his promising nephew. I speculated on bringing together two people more made for mutual detestation than any other two in Europe.” “It would have been a rash venture,” said she, fiercely; “If you mean for _me_, that was the very reason I thought of it. What other game than the rash one is open to a mau like _me?_” “Who ever had the safer road to fortune if he could have walked with the commonest prudence?” said she, bitterly.