“And what made me lose so important, though so ineffectual an ally?” asked the count, still smiling; but a gleam that belied the smile shot from his eye.
“What! when you bade me receive and co-operate with the miserable spies—the false Italians—whom you sent over, and seek to entangle this poor exile, when found, in some rash correspondence to be revealed to the court; when you sought to seduce the daughter of the Count of Peschiera, the descendant of those who had ruled in Italy, into the informer, the corrupter, and the traitress,—no, Giulio, then I recoiled; and then, fearful of your own sway over me, I retreated into France. I have answered you frankly.”
The count removed his hands from the shoulder on which they had reclined so cordially.
“And this,” said he, “is your wisdom, and this your gratitude! You, whose fortunes are bound up in mine; you, who subsist on my bounty; you, who—”
“Hold,” cried the marchesa, rising, and with a burst of emotion, as if stung to the utmost, and breaking into revolt from the tyranny of years,—“hold! Gratitude! bounty! Brother, brother! what, indeed, do I owe to you? The shame and the misery of a life. While yet a child, you condemned me to marry against my will, against my heart, against my prayers,—and laughed at my tears when I knelt to you for mercy. I was pure then, Giulio,—pure and innocent as the flowers in my virgin crown. And now—now—”
Beatrice stopped abruptly, and clasped her hands before her face.
“Now you upbraid me,” said the count, unruffled by her sudden passion, “because I gave you in marriage to a man young and noble?”
“Old in vices, and mean of soul! The marriage I forgave you. You had the right, according to the customs of our country, to dispose of my hand. But I forgave you not the consolations that you whispered in the ear of a wretched and insulted wife.”
“Pardon me the remark,” replied the count, with a courtly bend of his head, “but those consolations were also conformable to the customs of our country, and I was not aware till now that you had wholly disdained them. And,” continued the count, “you were not so long a wife that the gall of the chain should smart still. You were soon left a widow,—free, childless, young, beautiful.”
“And penniless.”