“Thou Viola!--thou, thyself. He whom thou hast deserted is here to preserve the mother to the child!” She started!--those accents, tremulous as her own! She started to her feet!--he was there,--in all the pride of his unwaning youth and superhuman beauty; there, in the house of dread, and in the hour of travail; there, image and personation of the love that can pierce the Valley of the Shadow, and can glide, the unscathed wanderer from the heaven, through the roaring abyss of hell! With a cry never, perhaps, heard before in that gloomy vault,--a cry of delight and rapture, she sprang forward, and fell at his feet. He bent down to raise her; but she slid from his arms. He called her by the familiar epithets of the old endearment, and she only answered him by sobs. Wildly, passionately, she kissed his hands, the hem of his garment, but voice was gone. “Look up, look up!--I am here,--I am here to save thee! Wilt thou deny to me thy sweet face? Truant, wouldst thou fly me still?” “Fly thee!” she said, at last, and in a broken voice; “oh, if my thoughts wronged thee,--oh, if my dream, that awful dream, deceived,--kneel down with me, and pray for our child!” Then springing to her feet with a sudden impulse, she caught up the infant, and, placing it in his arms, sobbed forth, with deprecating and humble tones, “Not for my sake,--not for mine, did I abandon thee, but--” “Hush!” said Zanoni; “I know all the thoughts that thy confused and struggling senses can scarcely analyse themselves. And see how, with a look, thy child answers them!” And in truth the face of that strange infant seemed radiant with its silent and unfathomable joy. It seemed as if it recognised the father; it clung--it forced itself to his breast, and there, nestling, turned its bright, clear eyes upon Viola, and smiled.