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…