“If this be so,” said Irene, “let me hope the best; meanwhile, it is enough of comfort and of happiness to know, that we love each other as of old.  Ah, Adrian, I am sadly changed; and often have I thought it a thing beyond my dreams, that thou shouldst see me again and love me still.”

“Fairer art thou and lovelier than ever,” answered Adrian, passionately; “and time, which has ripened thy bloom, has but taught me more deeply to feel thy value.  Farewell, Irene, I linger here no longer; thou wilt, I trust, hear soon of my success with my House, and ere the week be over I may return to claim thy hand in the face of day.”

The lovers parted; Adrian lingered on the spot, and Irene hastened to bury her emotion and her raptures in her own chamber.

As her form vanished, and the young Colonna slowly turned away, a tall mask strode abruptly towards him.

“Thou art a Colonna,” it said, “and in the power of the Senator.  Dost thou tremble?”

“If I be a Colonna, rude masker,” answered Adrian, coldly, “thou shouldst know the old proverb, ’He who stirs the column, shall rue the fall.’”

The stranger laughed aloud, and then lifting his mask, Adrian saw that it was the Senator who stood before him.

“My Lord Adrian di Castello,” said Rienzi, resuming all his gravity, “is it as friend or foe that you have honoured our revels this night?”

“Senator of Rome,” answered Adrian, with equal stateliness, “I partake of no man’s hospitality but as a friend.  A foe, at least to you, I trust never justly to be esteemed.”

“I would,” rejoined Rienzi, “that I could apply to myself unreservedly that most flattering speech.  Are these friendly feelings entertained towards me as the Governor of the Roman people, or as the brother of the woman who has listened to your vows?”

Adrian, who when the Senator had unmasked had followed his example, felt at these words that his eye quailed beneath Rienzi’s.  However, he recovered himself with the wonted readiness of an Italian, and replied laconically,

“As both.”

“Both!” echoed Rienzi.  “Then, indeed, noble Adrian, you are welcome hither.  And yet, methinks, if you conceived there was no cause for enmity between us, you would have wooed the sister of Cola di Rienzi in a guise more worthy of your birth; and, permit me to add, of that station which God, destiny, and my country, have accorded unto me.  You dare not, young Colonna, meditate dishonour to the sister of the Senator of Rome.  Highborn as you are, she is your equal.”

“Were I the Emperor, whose simple knight I but am, your sister were my equal,” answered Adrian, warmly.  “Rienzi, I grieve that I am discovered to you yet.  I had trusted that, as a mediator between the Barons and yourself, I might first have won your confidence, and then claimed my reward.  Know that with tomorrow’s dawn I depart for Palestrina, seeking to reconcile my young cousin to the choice