"Very likely."
"I will follow up this track, slight as it is."
"But if Mrs. Bertram received the communication, how comes it that it never reached myself—Oh, fool that I am, how should it! I, who guarded so carefully my incognito!"
"True. This your wife could not foresee; she would naturally imagine that your residence in England would be easily discovered. But many years must have passed since your wife lost sight of this Mrs. Bertram, if their acquaintance was made so soon after your marriage; and now it is a long time to retrace,—before even your Violante was born."
"Alas! yes. I lost two fair sons in the interval. Violante was born to me as the child of sorrow."
"And to make sorrow lovely! how beautiful she is!" The father smiled proudly.
"Where, in the loftiest houses of Europe, find a husband worthy of such a prize?"
"You forget that I am still an exile, she still dowerless. You forget that I am pursued by Peschiera; that I would rather see her a beggar's wife—than—-Pah, the very thought maddens me, it is so foul. /Corpo di Bacco!/ I have been glad to find her a husband already."
"Already! Then that young man spoke truly?"
"What young man?"