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death, and regardless of the storm. which beat with fury around him, pursued his way towards the Convent of Zanotti; fearful as an infant, and trembling as a woman, he dared hardly to look, or to respire; if he raised his eyes upwards, Heaven seemed to open in wrath and justice; if he cast them on the ground, the verdure was stained with gore; murder and injury were written upon every leaf.

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"MINE!" the offspring of me and Juliana!" he exclaimed, as hastily he pulled the Convent bell, and demanded of the porter for Zanotti.

"HE sleeps within his cell yonder," replied the man, regarding him with some inquisitiveness; and it is so rarely that he does sleep, Signior, that I do not much like to disturb him."

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THE light, which now reflected strongly on his person, shewed to Morano some spots of blood on his vesture; this, together with the impatience he felt to see Zanotti, almost threw him off his guard.

"KNOW you not," he cried, haughtily addressing the porter, "that the Marchese di"--He could not go on, he blushed at the mention of his dishonoured name, and in moderated accents said, "his business was of the utmost importance, and demanded instant egress to the Abbate."

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PROCEED, then," replied the other, again glancing a look of suspicion on his garment, " through that long winding passage, turn to the right, and you will find the Father Zanotti in his cell."

ON Zanotti now rested the last hope of the guilty and apprehensive Marchese; yet, strange to say, on the dissolution of that very man, lay, to his conscious mind, the most certain prospect of safety and security: the door of the cell soon gave way to his exertions, and for the first time in his life - shewed him the wary, the circumspect Zanotti, in his power; that dreaded enemy, though his bosom's counsellor, that watchful, restless spirit, that subtle Zanotti, that mysterious Ubaldo! buried in slumber and insensibility before him. Morano gasped for breath ; suggestions, dark and infernal, beat strongly at his heart; while the single taper, which glimmered in the apartment, only served to increase those suggestions, by strengthening, through the gloominess of the chamber, the black representations of his Own thoughts.

thoughts. Across the mattrass lay Zanotti; the book he had been reading' was yet open in his hand on a passage wherein the misguided author treated of the soul's annihilation. His cowl was thrown quite off his forehead, his brows were strongly knit together, and a peculiar cast of the mouth forcibly recalled that expression which had marked the early features of Ubaldo; but oh God! what were the sen-sations of the Marchese, when on the table before him stood that sametrunk, open, and full of papers, which, at an early period of this history, had occasioned him so much agitation; he flew towards it; one daring hand instinctively grasped at its contents, while the other, trembling between fear and resolution, groped unconsciously within his bosom :-Before him lay Ubaldo, unarmed, and sleeping;

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ing; that hidden and powerful master of his fate, the possessor of his dearest secret; and the man whom of all others he most feared and hated; and beside him were the means of, perhaps, unravelling a mystery, which, for so many years, had stood the test both of public investigation and private enquiry; and one blow, one well-directed aim, would rid him for ever of the one, and secure to him the other; while the gradations of vice and iniquity had been so constant and progressive within his mind, that murder was now become familiar to it; and he who had once resolved upon one assassination, now did not hesitate in the perpetration of another. The slumber of Zanotti was heavy; and it seemed as though the violent exertion of years had submitted to the soft influence of Nature; for a sigh, deep, laboured, and long repres

sed,

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