The crown of bays and myrtle was placed on her head; she descended from the Capitol amid a burst of triumphant music.  As she passed Oswald, the crown accidentally fell from her head.  He quickly picked it up and restored it to her, with a few words of homage in Italian.  What was his surprise when she thanked him in perfect English!

On the evening of the next day, Oswald was introduced to Corinne at her own house by the Count d’Erfeuil, a Frenchman who had been his companion in the journey into Italy.  The Prince Castel Forte and all the other guests paid her the most assiduous attention; Oswald gazed on her for the most part in silence, wondering at the mingled sweetness and vivacity of her conversation, realising that she possessed a grace that he had never met before.  Although she invited him to meet her again, he did not go on the next evening; he was restrained by a kind of terror at the feeling which excited him.

“Oh, my father,” he sighed, “had you known Corinne, what would you have thought of her?”

For the mourning that Oswald wore was for his father.  A terrible event in Oswald’s life had drawn the two apart; his father had died ere he could return to ask forgiveness.  But his father had blessed him on his deathbed, and it was Oswald’s whole desire in the grief that preyed upon him, to live in all things as his dead parent would have wished him to live.

The attraction of Corinne’s society soon drew him back to her presence, and during the next fortnight she, at her own proposal, guided him in his exploration of Rome.  Together they wandered through the ruins, the churches, the art galleries.  Their opinions were seldom in agreement; Corinne was characteristically and brightly Italian in her views, Oswald characteristically and sombrely English.  But each was conscious, none the less, of keen intellectual sympathy with the other; and Oswald, without speaking of the love of which he began to be conscious, made her sensible of it every hour in the day.  His proud retiring attachment shed a new interest over her life.  Accustomed as she was to the lively and flattering tributes of the Italians, this outward coldness disguising intense tenderness of heart captivated her imagination.

But one morning she received from him a note saying that indisposition would confine him to his house for some days.  Oswald had made up his mind to avoid Corinne; he felt too strongly the power of her charms.  What would his father have said of this woman?  Could she, the brilliant poetess, be expected to possess the English domestic virtues which his father valued above all things in a wife?  Besides, there was a mystery about her; she had not revealed her name and family even to him; nor had he ever had an explanation of her perfect knowledge of English.

Corinne was terrified, on receiving the note, by the idea that he would fly without bidding her adieu.  Unable to rest in the house where Oswald came not, she wandered in the gardens of Rome, hoping to meet him.  As she was seated in grief beside the Fount of Trevi, Oswald, who had paused there at the same moment, saw her countenance reflected in the water.  He started, as if he had seen her phantom; but a moment later Corinne had rushed forward and seized his arm—­then, repenting of her impetuosity, she blushed, and covered her face to hide her tears.