Miriam, Hilda, Kenyon, Donatello

The gentle reader, we trust, would not thank us for one of those minute
elucidations, which are so tedious, and, after all, so unsatisfactory,
in clearing up the romantic mysteries of a story. He is too wise to
insist upon looking closely at the wrong side of the tapestry, after the
right one has been sufficiently displayed to him, woven with the best of
the artist's skill, and cunningly arranged with a view to the harmonious
exhibition of its colors. If any brilliant, or beautiful, or even
tolerable effect have been produced, this pattern of kindly readers will
accept it at its worth, without tearing its web apart, with the idle
purpose of discovering how the threads have been knit together; for the
sagacity by which he is distinguished will long ago have taught him that
any narrative of human action and adventure whether we call it history
or romance--is certain to be a fragile handiwork, more easily rent than
mended. The actual experience of even the most ordinary life is full of
events that never explain themselves, either as regards their origin or
their tendency.

It would be easy, from conversations which we have held with the
sculptor, to suggest a clew to the mystery of Hilda's disappearance;
although, as long as she remained in Italy, there was a remarkable
reserve in her communications upon this subject, even to her most
intimate friends. Either a pledge of secrecy had been exacted, or a
prudential motive warned her not to reveal the stratagems of a religious
body, or the secret acts of a despotic government--whichever might be
responsible in the present instance--while still within the scope of
their jurisdiction. Possibly, she might not herself be fully aware what
power had laid its grasp upon her person. What has chiefly perplexed us,
however, among Hilda's adventures, is the mode of her release, in which
some inscrutable tyranny or other seemed to take part in the frolic of
the Carnival. We can only account for it, by supposing that the fitful
and fantastic imagination of a woman--sportive, because she must
otherwise be desperate--had arranged this incident, and made it the
condition of a step which her conscience, or the conscience of another,
required her to take.