II.

  My daughter! can it be a daughter now
  Shall greet my being with her infant smile? 
  And shall I press that fair and taintless brow
  With my fond lips, and tempt, with many a wile
  Of playful love, those features to beguile
  A parent with their mirth?  In the wild sea
  Of this dark life, behold a little isle
  Rises amid the waters, bright and free,
  A haven for my hopes of fond security!

  III.

  And thou shalt bear a name my line has loved,
  And their fair daughters owned for many an age,
  Since first our fiery blood a wanderer roved,
  And made in sunnier lands his pilgrimage,
  Where proud defiance with the waters wage
  The sea-born city’s walls; the graceful towers
  Loved by the bard and honoured by the sage! 
  My own Venetia now shall gild our bowers,
  And with her spell enchain our life’s enchanted hours!

  IV.

  Oh! if the blessing of a father’s heart
  Hath aught of sacred in its deep-breath’d prayer,
  Skilled to thy gentle being to impart,
  As thy bright form itself, a fate as fair;
  On thee I breathe that blessing!  Let me share,
  O God! her joys; and if the dark behest
  Of woe resistless, and avoidless care,
  Hath, not gone forth, oh! spare this gentle guest. 
  And wreak thy needful wrath on my resigned breast!

An hour elapsed, and Venetia did not move.  Over and over again she conned the only address from the lips of her father that had ever reached her ear.  A strange inspiration seconded the exertion of an exercised memory.  The duty was fulfilled, the task completed.  Then a sound was heard without.  The thought that her mother had returned occurred to her; she looked up, the big tears streaming down her face; she listened, like a young hind just roused by the still-distant huntsman, quivering and wild:  she listened, and she sprang up, replaced the volume, arranged the chair, cast one long, lingering, feverish glance at the portrait, skimmed through the room, hesitated one moment in the ante-chamber; opened, as all was silent, the no longer mysterious door, turned the noiseless lock, tripped lightly along the vestibule; glided into her mother’s empty apartment, reposited the key that had opened so many wonders in the casket; and, then, having hurried to her own chamber, threw herself on her bed in a paroxysm of contending emotions, that left her no power of pondering over the strange discovery that had already given a new colour to her existence.

CHAPTER VI.

Her mother had not returned; it was a false alarm; but Venetia could not quit her bed.  There she remained, repeating to herself her father’s verses.  Then one thought alone filled her being.  Was he dead?  Was this fond father, who had breathed this fervent blessing over her birth, and invoked on his own head all the woe and misfortunes of her destiny, was he, indeed, no more?  How swiftly must the arrow have sped after he received the announcement that a child was given to him,