One evening, the fifth after their first meeting at Pompeii, Glaucus and Ione, with a small party of chosen friends, were returning from an excursion round the bay; their vessel skimmed lightly over the twilight waters, whose lucid mirror was only broken by the dripping oars. As the rest of the party conversed gayly with each other, Glaucus lay at the feet of Ione, and he would have looked up in her face, but he did not dare. Ione broke the pause between them.

"My poor brother," said she, sighing, how once he would he enjoyed this hour!"

"Your brother!" said Glaucus; "I have not seen him. Occupied with you, I have thought of nothing else, or I should have asked if that was not your brother for whose companionship you left me at the temple of Minerva, in Neapolis?"

" It was.

"And is he here?"

He is."

At Pompeii ! and not constantly with you ? Impossible!"

He has other duties," answered Ione, sadly; he is a priest of Isis."

So young, too ; and that priesthood, in its laws at least, so severe!" said the warm and bright-hearted Greek, in surprise and pity. What could have been his inducement?"

He was always enthusiastic and fervent in his religious devotion; and the eloquence of an Egyptian our friend and guardian kindled in him the pious desire to consecrate his life to the most mystic of our deities. Perhaps, in the intenseness of his zeal, he found in the severity of that peculiar priesthood its peculiar attraction."

And he does not repent his choice? I trust he is happy."

Ione sighed deeply, and lowered her veil over her eyes.

I wish," said she, after a pause, " that he had not been so hasty. Perhaps, like all who expect too much, he is revolted too easily!"

"Then he is not happy in his new condition. And this Egyptian, was he a priest himself ? was he interested in recruits to the sacred band?"

"No. His main interest was in our happiness. He thought he promoted that of my brother. We were left orphans."

"Like myself," said Glaucus, with a deep meaning in his voice.

Ione cast down her eyes as she resumed:

And Arbaces sought to supply the place of our parent. You must know him. He loves genius."

"Arbaces ! I know him already; at least, we speak when we meet. But for your praise I would not seek to know more of him. My heart inclines readily to most of my kind. But that dark Egyptian, with his gloomy brow and icy smiles, seems to me to sadden the very sun. One would think that, like Epimenides the Cretan, he had spent forty years in a cave, and had found something unnatural in the daylight ever afterward."

" Yet, like Epimenides, he is kind, and wise, and gentle," answered Ione.

" Oh, happy that he has thy praise ! He needs no other virtues to make him dear to me."

"His calm, his coldness," said Ione, evasively pursuing the subject, "are perhaps but the exhaustion of past sufferings; as yonder mountain (and she pointed to Vesuvius), which we see dark and tranquil in the distance, once nursed the fires forever quenched."

They both gazed on the mountain as Ione said these words; the rest of the sky was bathed in rosy and tender hues, but over that grey summit, rising amid the woods and vineyards that then climbed halfway up. the ascent, there hung a black and ominous cloud, the single frown of the landscape. A sudden and unaccountable gloom came over each as they thus gazed; and in that sympathy which love had already taught them, and which bade them, in the slightest shadows of emotion, the faintest presentiment of evil, turn for refuge to each other, their gaze at the same moment left the mountain, and, full of unimaginable tenderness, met. What need had they of words to say they loved?