From my one page proof­read today (all I can stand) of George W. M. Reynolds’s Wag­ner, the Wehr-​​Wolf:

…is now in pos­ses­sion of Nisida of Riverola; in the pos­ses­sion of that woman of iron mind and potent energy, and whom thou fondly believest to be deaf and dumb!

Nisida slept no more that night, the occur­rences of which fur­nished her with so much food for pro­found med­i­ta­tion: and with the ear­li­est gleam of dawn that tinged the east­ern heaven, she rose from her couch. Enter­ing the saloon, she opened the win­dows to admit the gen­tle breeze of morn­ing; and ere she com­menced her toi­let, she lin­gered to gaze upon the stately ships that were plow­ing the blue sea in the wake of the admiral’s ves­sel wherein she was. Sud­denly her eyes fell upon what appeared to be a small speck at a lit­tle dis­tance; but as this object was mov­ing rapidly along on the sur­face of the Mediter­ranean, it soon approached suf­fi­ciently near to enable her to dis­cern that it was a boat impelled by a sin­gle sail. Urged by an unde­fin­able and yet a strong sen­ti­ment of curios­ity, Nisida remained at the saloon win­dow, watch­ing the progress of the lit­tle bark, which bounded over the waves with extra­or­di­nary speed, bend­ing grace­fully to the breeze that thus wafted it onward. Nearer and nearer toward the ves­sel it came, though not pur­su­ing the same direc­tion; and in five min­utes it passed within a few yards of the stern of the kapitan-pasha’s ship.

But, oh! won­drous and unac­count­able fact. There, stretched upon his back in that bound­ing boat, and evi­dently buried in deep slum­ber, with the rays of the ris­ing sun gleam­ing upon his fine and now slightly flushed coun­te­nance, lay he whose image was so indeli­bly impressed upon the heart of Nisida–her hand­some and strangely-​​fated Fer­nand Wag­ner! The moment the con­vic­tion that the sleeper was indeed he struck to the mind of Nisida, she would have called him by name–she would have endeav­ored to awake him, if only to exchange a sin­gle word of fond­ness, for her assumed dumb­ness was for the moment for­got­ten; but she was ren­dered motion­less and remained speechless–stupefied, par­a­lyzed, as it were, with min­gled won­der and joy; won­der that he should have found the means of escape from the island, and joy that she was thus per­mit­ted to behold him at least once again. But the plea­sure which this inci­dent excited in her mind was tran­si­tory indeed; for the boat swept by, as if urged on by a stronger impulse than that of the gen­tle breeze of morning–and in another minute Nisida beheld it no more.

The sun was set­ting behind the west­ern hills of Sicily as Fer­nand Wag­ner entered the squalid sub­urb which at that period stretched from the town of Syra­cuse to the sea. His step was elas­tic, and he held his head high–for his heart was full of joy­ous and burn­ing hope. Hith­erto the promises of the angel who had last appeared to him were com­pletely ful­filled. The boat was wafted by a favor­able breeze direct from the Island of Snakes to the shores of Sicily; and he had landed in the imme­di­ate vicin­ity of Syracuse–the town in which a fur­ther rev­e­la­tion was to be made in respect to the break­ing of the spell which had fixed upon him the fright­ful doom of the Wehr-​​Wolf! But lit­tle sus­pected Fer­nand Wag­ner that one morn­ing, while he…