"But when will she return?" persisted the sculptor; "tell me the when,
and where, and how!"
"A little patience. Do not press me so," said Miriam; and again Kenyon
was struck by the sprite-like, fitful characteristic of her manner, and
a sort of hysteric gayety, which seemed to be a will-o'-the-wisp from
a sorrow stagnant at her heart. "You have more time to spare than I.
First, listen to something that I have to tell. We will talk of Hilda by
and by."
Then Miriam spoke of her own life, and told facts that threw a gleam
of light over many things which had perplexed the sculptor in all his
previous knowledge of her. She described herself as springing from
English parentage, on the mother's side, but with a vein, likewise, of
Jewish blood; yet connected, through her father, with one of those few
princely families of Southern Italy, which still retain great wealth and
influence. And she revealed a name at which her auditor started and grew
pale; for it was one that, only a few years before, had been familiar
to the world in connection with a mysterious and terrible event.
The reader, if he think it worth while to recall some of the strange
incidents which have been talked of, and forgotten, within no long time
past, will remember Miriam's name.
"You shudder at me, I perceive," said Miriam, suddenly interrupting her
narrative.
"No; you were innocent," replied the sculptor. "I shudder at the
fatality that seems to haunt your footsteps, and throws a shadow of
crime about your path, you being guiltless."
"There was such a fatality," said Miriam; "yes; the shadow fell upon
me, innocent, but I went astray in it, and wandered--as Hilda could tell
you--into crime."
She went on to say that, while yet a child, she had lost her English
mother. From a very early period of her life, there had been a contract
of betrothal between herself and a certain marchese, the representative
of another branch of her paternal house,--a family arrangement between
two persons of disproportioned ages, and in which feeling went for
nothing. Most Italian girls of noble rank would have yielded themselves
to such a marriage as an affair of course. But there was something
in Miriam's blood, in her mixed race, in her recollections of her
mother,--some characteristic, finally, in her own nature,--which
had given her freedom of thought, and force of will, and made this
prearranged connection odious to her. Moreover, the character of her
destined husband would have been a sufficient and insuperable objection;
for it betrayed traits so evil, so treacherous, so vile, and yet so
strangely subtle, as could only be accounted for by the insanity which
often develops itself in old, close-kept races of men, when long unmixed
with newer blood. Reaching the age when the marriage contract should
have been fulfilled, Miriam had utterly repudiated it.