La Signora Florinda was a grand-daughter of the house of Carrati, one of the oldest and proudest of all Italy.  Having been placed in a convent in the environs of Florence for her education, the Grand Duke by chance met her while quite young, and learning her name, he at once knew her to be an orphan, and now under the care of her uncle Signor Latrezzi.  By his own request he became her guardian, and from that time Florinda became an inmate of the palace of the duke, and the constant companion of the duchess.

Her parents deceased, as the reader has already gathered, while she was yet a child, leaving her an immense property, which was now in the hands of her protector, the monarch himself.  About the time, or rather some months previous to the commencement, of our tale, the duchess had died of consumption.  Florinda for more than a year had been her intimate and dearly loved companion, and for this reason alone was dearly prized by the Grand Duke, who still sincerely mourned his wife’s death.

The deep devotion and constancy of this monarch, Leopold of Tuscany, to his wife, evinced an affection rarely found in marriages of state.  Inconsolable for her death, he shut himself from the world for a long time, weeping in secret the affliction he had sustained in her loss.  To this day there ornaments the private apartments of the Pitti Palace busts of the grand duchess, and portraits of her by the first artists; on the walls of the duke’s private study there is a full length portrait of his wife done in fresco, representing her to be what she really was, a noble and lovely woman.

Since the death of the duchess, Florinda had experienced, as we have intimated, an increased degree of fatherly care and affection from the duke, because of the fact of her intimacy with her whom he had now lost.  The duchess, during the period that Florinda had been with her, had contracted for her a tender affection, and did not forget in the trying moments of her last hours to commend her to the continued and true guidance of the duke.  This circumstance of course rendered her an object of renewed interest and regard in the eyes of her noble protector, with whom she dwelt as though she had been his own well-beloved child.

In addition to this, she presented claims to his kind protection, from the fact that she was an orphan, the last of a proud and noble house long attached to the service of the crown-a fact that had in the first place attracted his interest.

“Come, Carlton,” said the lady, with a sweet smile, “now tell me one of those Rhine legends which you relate with such spirit.  You promised me another.”

“I will, dearest,” was the reply; and her companion, drawing still closer to her side, began as the next chapter will relate.

CHAPTER III.

A Rhine legend.

An honest tale speeds best being plainly told.