Thus, by the time she had been ten or twelve days upon the island, her appearance seemed most admirably to correspond with her new and lonely mode of life, and the spot where her destinies had cast her. Habited in a single linen garment, confined round the slender waist with a cestus of flowers, and with light slippers upon her feet, but with a diadem of roses on her head, and with wreaths round her bare arms, and her equally bare ankles, she appeared to be the goddess of that island--the genius of that charming clime of fruits, and verdure, and crystal streams, and flowers. The majesty of her beauty was softened, and thus enhanced, by the wonderful simplicity of her attire; the dazzling brilliancy of her charms was subdued by the chaste, the innocent, the primitive aspect with which those fantastically woven flowers invested her. Even the extraordinary luster of her fine dark eyes was moderated by the gaudy yet elegant assemblage of hues formed by those flowers which she wore. Was it not strange that she whose soul we have hitherto seen bent on deeds or schemes of stern and important nature--who never acted without a motive, and whose mind was far too deeply occupied with worldly cares and pursuits to bestow a thought on trifles--who, indeed, would have despised herself had she wasted a moment in toying with a flower, or watching the playful motions of a bird,--was it not strange that Nisida should have become so changed as we now find her in that island of which she was the queen? Conceive that same Nisida who planned dark plots against Flora Francatelli, now tripping along the banks of the sunlit stream, bedecked with flowers and playing with the swans. Imagine that same being, who dealt death to Agnes, now seated beneath the shade of myrtles and embowering vines, distributing bread or pomegranate seeds to the birds that hopped cheerfully around her. Picture to yourself that woman of majestic beauty, whom you have seen clad in black velvet and wearing a dark thick veil, now weaving for herself garments of flowers, and wandering in the lightest possible attire by the seashore, or by the rippling stream, or amidst the mazes of the fruit-laden groves. And sometimes, as she sat upon the yellow sand, gazing on the wavelets of the Mediterranean, that were racing one after another, like living things from some far off region, to that lovely but lonely isle, it would seem as if all the low and sweet voices of the sea--never loud and sullen now, since the night of storm which cast her on that strand--were heard by her, and made delicious music to her ears! In that island must we leave her now for a short space,--leave her to her birds, her flowers, and her mermaid-sports in the sea,--leave her also to her intervals of dark and dismal thoughts, and to her long, but ineffectual watchings for the appearance of a sail in the horizon. CHAPTER XXXIX. THE WEHR-WOLF.