All the wishes thou canst form shall be fulfilled. The ends of the earth shall minister to thee pomp, power, luxury, shall be thy slaves. Arbaces shall have no ambition, save the pride of obeying thee. Ione, turn upon me those eyes shed upon me thy smile. Dark is my soul when thy face is hid from it ; shine over me, my sun my heaven my daylight ! Ione, Ione do not reject my love!"

Alone, and in the power of this singular and fearful man, Ione was not yet terrified; the respect of his language, the softness of his voice, reassured her; and in her own purity she felt protection. But she was confused, astonished; it was some moments before she could recover the power to reply.

Rise, Arbaces' said she at length; and she resigned to him once more her hand, which she as quickly withdrew again, when she felt upon it the burning pressure of his lips. Rise! and if thou art serious, if thy language be in earnest-

" If!" said he, tenderly.

"Well, then, listen to me: you have been my guardian, my friend, my monitor; for this new character I was not prepared; think not," she added, quickly, as she saw his dark eyes glitter with the fierceness of his passion, think not that I scorn that I am untouched that I am not honored by this homage; but, say canst thou hear me calmly?"

Ay, though thy words were lightning, and could blast me!"

"I love another !" said Ione, blushingly, but in a firm voice.

By the gods by hell! shouted Arbaces, rising to his fullest height: dare not tell me that dare not mock me it is impossible. Whom hast thou seen whom known? Oh, Ione! it is thy woman's invention, thy woman's art that speaks thou wouldst gain time. I have surprised I have terrified thee. Do with me as thou wilt say that thou lovest not me; but say not that thou lovest another!"

Alas!" began Ione, and then, appalled before his sudden and unlooked-for violence, she burst into tears.

Arbaces came nearer to her his breath glowed fiercely on her cheek; he wound his arms round her she sprang from his embrace. In the struggle a tablet fell from her bosom on the ground; Arbaces perceived and seized it it was the letter that morning received from Glaucus. Ione sank upon the couch half-dead with terror.

Rapidly the eyes of Arbaces ran over the writing; the Neapolitan did not dare to gaze upon him. She did not see the deadly paleness that came over his countenance she marked not his withering frown, nor the quivering of his lip, nor the convulsions that heaved his breast. - He read it to the end, and then, as the letter fell from his hand, he said in a voice of deceitful calmness:

"Is the writer of this the man thou lovest?"

Ione sobbed, but answered not.

"Speak!" he rather shrieked than said.

"It is it is!"

And his name it is written here his name is Glaucus!"

Ione, clasping her hands, looked round as for succor or escape.

"Then hear me," said Arbaces, sinking his voice into a whisper; " thou shalt go to thy tomb rather than to his arms! What! thinkest thou Arbaces will brook a rival such as this puny Greek? What! thinkest thou that he has watched the fruit ripen to yield it to another! Pretty fool no! Thou art mine all only mine; and thus thus I seize and claim thee!" As he spoke, he caught Ione in his arms; and in that ferocious grasp was all the energy less of love than of revenge.

But to Ione despair gave supernatural strength. She again tore herself from him she rushed to that part of the room by which she had entered she half-withdrew the curtain he seized her again she broke away from him, and fell, exhausted and with a loud shriek, at the base of the column which supported the head of the Egyptian goddess. Arbaces paused for a moment, as if to regain his breath, and then once more darted upon his prey.

At that instant the curtain was rudely torn aside, the Egyptian felt a fierce and strong grasp upon his shoulder. He turned he beheld before him the flashing eyes of Glaucus, and the pale, worn, but. menacing, countenance of Ap cides. "Ah!" he muttered, as he glared from one to the other, " what Fury hath sent ye hither?"

" At'e" answered Glaucus, and he closed at once with the Egyptian. Meanwhile, Ap cides raised his sister, now lifeless, from the ground; his strength, exhausted by a mind long overwrought, did not suffice to bear her away, light and delicate though her shape; he placed her, therefore, on the couch and stood over her with a brandishing knife, watching the contest between Glaucus and the Egyptian and ready to plunge his weapon into the bosom of Arbaces should he be victorious in the struggle. There is, perhaps, nothing on earth so terrible as the naked and unarmed contest of animal strength, no weapon but those which Nature supplies to rage. Both the antagonists were now locked in each other's grasp the hand of each seeking the throat of the other the face drawn back the fierce eyes flashing, the muscles strained, the veins swelled, the lips apart, the teeth set; both were strong beyond the ordinary power of men, both animated by relentless wrath; they coiled, they wound around each other; they rocked to and fro they swayed from end to end of their confined arena; they uttered cries of ire and revenge; they were now before the altar now at the base of the column where the struggle had commenced ; they drew back for breath -Arbaces leaning against the column Glaucus a few paces apart.

0 ancient goddess!" exclaimed Arbaces, clasping the column, and raising his eyes toward the sacred image it supported, "protect thy chosen proclaim thy vengeance against this thing of an upstart creed, who with sacrilegious violence profanes thy resting-place and assails thy servant."

As he spoke the still and vast features of the goddess seemed suddenly to glow with life ; through the black marble, as through a transparent veil, flushed luminously a crimson and burning hue; around the head played and darted coruscations of livid lightning; the eyes became like balls of lurid fire, and seemed fixed in withering and intolerable wrath upon the countenance of the Greek. Awed and appalled by this sudden and mystic answer to the prayer of his foe, and not free from the hereditary superstition of his race, the cheeks of Glaucus. paled before that strange and ghastly animation of the marble his knees knocked together he stood, seized with a divine panic, dismayed aghast, half-unmanned before his foe! Arbaces gave him not breathing time to recover himself: "Die, wretch!" he shouted, in a voice of thunder, as he sprang upon the Greek; "the Mighty Mother claims thee as a living sacrifice!" Taken thus by surprise in the first consternation of his superstitious fears, the Greek lost his footing the marble floor was as smooth as glass he slid he fell. Arbaces planted his foot on the breast of his fallen foe. Ap cides, taught by his sacred profession, as well as by his knowledge of Arbaces, to distrust all miraculous interpositions, had not shared the dismay of his companion; he rushed forward, his knife gleamed in the air the watchful Egyptian caught his arm as it descended one wrench of his powerful hand tore the weapon from the weak grasp of the priest one sweeping blow stretched him to the earth with a load and exulting yell Arbaces brandished the knife on high. Glaucus gazed upon his impending fate with unwinking, eyes, and in the stern and scornful resignation of a fallen gladiator, when, at that awful instant, the floor shook under them with a rapid and convulsive throe a mightier spirit than that of the Egyptian was abroad a giant and crushing power, before which sunk into sudden impotence his passion and his arts. IT woke--it stirred that the dread Demon of the Earthquake --laughing to scorn alike the magic of human guile and the malice of human wrath. As a Titan, on whom the mountains are piled, it roused itself from the sleep of years it moved on its tortured couch -- the caverns below groaned and trembled beneath the motion of its limbs. In the moment of his vengeance and his power, the self-prized demigod was humbled to his real clay. Far and wide along the soil went a hoarse and rumbling sound--the curtains of the chamber shook as at the blast of a storm the altar rocked the tripod reeled and, high over the place of contest, the column trembled and waved from side to side the sable head of the goddess tottered and fell from its pedestal; and as the Egyptian stooped above his intended victim, right upon his bended form, right between the shoulder and the neck, struck the marble mass! The shock stretched him like the blow of death, at once, suddenly, without sound or motion, or semblance of life, upon the floor, apparently crushed by the very divinity he had impiously animated and invoked!

" The Earth has preserved her children," said Glaucus, staggering to his feet. "Blessed be the dread convulsion! Let us worship the providence of the gods!" He assisted Ap cides to rise, and then turned upward the face of Arbaces; it seemed locked as in death; blood gushed from the Egyptian's lips over his glittering robes; he fell heavily from the arms of Glaucus, and the red stream trickled slowly along the marble. Again the earth shook beneath their feet; they were forced to cling to each other; the convulsion ceased as suddenly as it came; they tarried no longer; Glaucus bore Ione lightly in his arms, and they fled from the unhallowed spot. But scarce had they entered the garden when they were met on all sides by flying and disordered groups of women and slaves, whose festive and glittering garments contrasted in mockery the solemn terror of the hour; they did not appear to heed the strangers they were occupied only with their own fears. After the tranquility of sixteen years, that burning and treacherous soil again menaced destruction; they uttered but one cry, "THE EARTHQUAKE! THE EARTHQUAKE!" and passing unmolested from the midst of them, Ap cides and his companions, without entering the house, hastened down one of the alleys, passed a small open gate, and there, sitting on a little mound over which spread the gloom of the dark-green aloes, the moonlight fell on the bended figure of the blind girl she was weeping bitterly.