Carlton and Florinda sat together in a private apartment in the royal palace.  The latter was playing a favorite air upon the guitar to the artist, who sat at her feet watching with admiration every movement of that beautiful and dearly loved form.  He found every attribute there worthy a heart’s devotion.  Like the worshippers of the sun, who believe that God sits there on his throne, so did he, in his homage, picture the good angel of all things in the heart of Florinda.

Let us pause for a moment, to describe the apartment in the Palazzo Pitti, devoted to the fair Signora Florinda, and where she now sat with him she loved.  It was fittingly chosen, being in a retired yet easily accessible angle of the palace; an apartment lofty and large, yet not so much so as to impart the vacant and lonely feeling that a large room is wont to do over the feelings of the occupant when alone.

It was lighted by two extensive windows, reaching nearly from the ceiling to the floor.  The magnificence of the furniture, the rich and well chosen paintings that ornamented the walls, and in short, the air of unostentatious richness that struck the beholder on entering it, showed at once the good taste and general character of the occupant.

On a little table of elaborate and beautiful workmanship, were placed with a few rare and favorite books, some curious ornaments from the hands of the cunning artificers of the East, most beautifully fancied, and from which a moral might be read telling the fair occupant of the unhappy state of her own sex in that far off clime.

The broad, heavy and richly-wrought curtains that tempered the light admitted through the gorgeously stained glass windows, were of Tuscan satin, blending, like the skies under which they were manufactured, a most happy conceit of rich and rosy colors.  Pendant from the hoops in which both were gathered, hung a bunch of ostrich feathers of showy whiteness belieing, as it were, the country of their nativity-swarthy Africa.  They were more for fancy than for use, though they did sometimes serve to chase the flies.

The seats and couches were of stuffed and figured velvet from the manufactories of the queen of the Adriatic, Venice.  The scarcely less soft and pliant carpet was of eastern ingenuity, and no richer served the Turkish Sultan himself.  Two opposite sides of the apartment were ornamented each with a mirror of extensive size.  About their richly gilded frames was wound, in graceful festoons, the finest Mechlin lace as a screen for the eye.

On one side of the room stood an American piano, and beside it a harp of surpassing richness.  Here Carlton and Florinda were seated at this time in all the confidence and enjoyment of acknowledged love.

“Carlton, I told thee that fortune would smile upon thee; thou rememberest that I told thee.”

“It has indeed, and I am blessed.”

And thus saying, he pressed the delicate, jewelled hand that he held affectionately to his lips, while his eyes beamed with love.