the most intricate windings of the city.  But her chief delight was still in visiting the few feet of ground which made the garden of Glaucus—­in tending the flowers that at least repaid her love.  Sometimes she entered the chamber where he sat, and sought a conversation, which she nearly always broke off abruptly—­for conversation with Glaucus only tended to one subject—­Ione; and that name from his lips inflicted agony upon her.  Often she bitterly repented the service she had rendered to Ione:  often she said inly, ’If she had fallen, Glaucus could have loved her no longer’; and then dark and fearful thoughts crept into her breast.

She had not experienced fully the trials that were in store for her, when she had been thus generous.  She had never before been present when Glaucus and Ione were together; she had never heard that voice so kind to her, so much softer to another.  The shock that crushed her heart with the tidings that Glaucus loved, had at first only saddened and benumbed—­by degrees jealousy took a wilder and fiercer shape; it partook of hatred—­it whispered revenge.  As you see the wind only agitate the green leaf upon the bough, while the leaf which has lain withered and seared on the ground, bruised and trampled upon till the sap and life are gone, is suddenly whirled aloft—­now here—­now there—­without stay and without rest; so the love which visits the happy and the hopeful hath but freshness on its wings! its violence is but sportive.  But the heart that hath fallen from the green things of life, that is without hope, that hath no summer in its fibres, is torn and whirled by the same wind that but caresses its brethren—­it hath no bough to cling to—­it is dashed from path to path—­till the winds fall, and it is crushed into the mire for ever.

The friendless childhood of Nydia had hardened prematurely her character; perhaps the heated scenes of profligacy through which she had passed, seemingly unscathed, had ripened her passions, though they had not sullied her purity.  The orgies of Burbo might only have disgusted, the banquets of the Egyptian might only have terrified, at the moment; but the winds that pass unheeded over the soil leave seeds behind them.  As darkness, too, favors the imagination, so, perhaps, her very blindness contributed to feed with wild and delirious visions the love of the unfortunate girl.  The voice of Glaucus had been the first that had sounded musically to her ear; his kindness made a deep impression upon her mind; when he had left Pompeii in the former year, she had treasured up in her heart every word he had uttered; and when any one told her that this friend and patron of the poor flower-girl was the most brilliant and the most graceful of the young revellers of Pompeii, she had felt a pleasing pride in nursing his recollection.  Even the task which she imposed upon herself, of tending his flowers, served to keep him in her mind; she associated him with all that was most charming to her impressions;