CHAPTER VIII.
Twilight was dark in the room to which Beatrice had conducted Violante. A great change had come over Beatrice. Humble and weeping, she knelt beside Violante, hiding her face, and imploring pardon. And Violante, striving to resist the terror for which she now saw such cause as no woman-heart can defy, still sought to soothe, and still sweetly assured forgiveness.
Beatrice had learned, after quick and fierce questions, which at last compelled the answers that cleared away every doubt, that her jealousy had been groundless, that she had no rival in Violante. From that moment the passions that had made her the tool of guilt abruptly vanished, and her conscience startled her with the magnitude of her treachery. Perhaps had Violante’s heart been wholly free, or she had been of that mere commonplace, girlish character which women like Beatrice are apt to despise, the marchesa’s affection for Peschiera, and her dread of him, might have made her try to persuade her young kinswoman at least to receive the count’s visit,—at least to suffer him to make his own excuses, and plead his own cause. But there had been a loftiness of spirit in which Violante had first defied the mareliesa’s questions, followed by such generous, exquisite sweetness, when the girl perceived how that wild heart was stung and maddened, and such purity of mournful candour when she had overcome her own virgin bashfulness sufficiently to undeceive the error she detected, and confess where her own affections were placed, that Beatrice bowed before her as mariner of old to some fair saint that had allayed the storm.
“I have deceived you!” she cried, through her sobs; “but I will now save you at any cost. Had you been as I deemed,—the rival who had despoiled all the hopes of my future life,—I could without remorse have been the accomplice I am pledged to be. But now you—Oh, you, so good and so noble—you can never, be the bride of Peschiera. Nay, start not; he shall renounce his designs forever, or I will go myself to our emperor, and expose the dark secrets of his life. Return with me quick to the home from which I ensnared you.”
Beatrice’s hand was on the door while she spoke. Suddenly her face fell, her lips grew white; the door was locked from without. She called,—no one answered; the bell-pull in the room gave no sound; the windows were high and barred,—they did not look on the river, nor the street, but on a close, gloomy, silent yard, high blank walls all round it; no one to hear the cry of distress, rang it ever so loud and sharp.
Beatrice divined that she herself had been no less ensnared than her companion; that Peschiera, distrustful of her firmness in evil, had precluded her from the power of reparation. She was in a house only tenanted by his hirelings. Not a hope to save Violante from a fate that now appalled her seemed to remain. Thus, in incoherent self-reproaches and frenzied tears, Beatrice knelt beside her victim, communicating more and more the terrors that she felt, as the hours rolled on, and the room darkened, till it was only by the dull lamp which gleamed through the grimy windows from the yard without, that each saw the face of the other.
Night came on; they heard a clock from some distant church strike the hours. The dim fire had long since burned out, and the air became intensely cold. No one broke upon their solitude,—not a voice was heard in the house. They felt neither cold nor hunger,—they felt but the solitude, and the silence, and the dread of something that was to come.
At length, about midnight, a bell rang at the street door; then there was the quick sound of steps, of sullen bolts withdrawn, of low, murmured voices. Light streamed through the chinks of the door to the apartment, the door itself opened. Two Italians bearing tapers entered, and the Count di Peschiera followed.
Beatrice sprang up, and rushed towards her brother. He laid his hand gently on her lips, and motioned to the Italians to withdraw. They placed the lights on the table, and vanished without a word.
Peschiera then, putting aside his sister, approached Violante.