Such was the city through which Hilda, for three years past, had been
wandering without a protector or a guide. She had trodden lightly over
the crumble of old crimes; she had taken her way amid the grime and
corruption which Paganism had left there, and a perverted Christianity
had made more noisome; walking saint-like through it all, with white,
innocent feet; until, in some dark pitfall that lay right across her
path, she had vanished out of sight. It was terrible to imagine what
hideous outrage might have thrust her into that abyss!
Then the lover tried to comfort himself with the idea that Hilda's
sanctity was a sufficient safeguard. Ah, yes; she was so pure! The
angels, that were of the same sisterhood, would never let Hilda come to
harm. A miracle would be wrought on her behalf, as naturally as a father
would stretch out his hand to save a best-beloved child. Providence
would keep a little area and atmosphere about her as safe and wholesome
as heaven itself, although the flood of perilous iniquity might hem
her round, and its black waves hang curling above her head! But these
reflections were of slight avail. No doubt they were the religious
truth. Yet the ways of Providence are utterly inscrutable; and many a
murder has been done, and many an innocent virgin has lifted her white
arms, beseeching its aid in her extremity, and all in vain; so that,
though Providence is infinitely good and wise, and perhaps for that very
reason, it may be half an eternity before the great circle of its scheme
shall bring us the superabundant recompense for all these sorrows! But
what the lover asked was such prompt consolation as might consist with
the brief span of mortal life; the assurance of Hilda's present safety,
and her restoration within that very hour.
An imaginative man, he suffered the penalty of his endowment in the
hundred-fold variety of gloomily tinted scenes that it presented to
him, in which Hilda was always a central figure. The sculptor forgot his
marble. Rome ceased to be anything, for him, but a labyrinth of dismal
streets, in one or another of which the lost girl had disappeared. He
was haunted with the idea that some circumstance, most important to be
known, and perhaps easily discoverable, had hitherto been overlooked,
and that, if he could lay hold of this one clew, it would guide him
directly in the track of Hilda's footsteps. With this purpose in
view, he went, every morning, to the Via Portoghese, and made it
the starting-point of fresh investigations. After nightfall, too, he
invariably returned thither, with a faint hope fluttering at his heart
that the lamp might again be shining on the summit of the tower, and
would dispel this ugly mystery out of the circle consecrated by its
rays. There being no point of which he could take firm hold, his mind
was filled with unsubstantial hopes and fears. Once Kenyon had seemed
to cut his life in marble; now he vaguely clutched at it, and found it
vapor.