“And I pray to my Saint also, who is very powerful—Santa Rosalia herself, whose blessed image I gave you. And W-Will, dear,” she continued, divining his disappointment by contact—it was too dark to see even the outline of his face—“if you had asked me on Monday night I should have promised you, and been miserable for ever afterwards, for I could not have been unfaithful to an English husband: the English are not like us.”
Will said nothing, but again she divined, and continued:
“You hate to hear a woman talk like that; but women think like that here, and I could not have done it with you.”
“Oh, why didn’t I ask you?” he said desperately.
She answered, “Because you were too noble a gentleman. You thought that I should construe your offer into pity, and pity into a belief in my guilt. But when you knelt before me and just believed in my innocence, I would have given my soul to be tortured in hell for you; and I would die now for you any minute of my life. If my living makes you unhappy for your promised spouse, and my death will help you to forget me, I will walk through that porthole there, and the dark water will tell no tales, and it will only be cold for a little minute!”
“I would leap after you; I should not care to live without you, and I am not allowed to go back to the city and be one of those who have to die fighting the French. Whether the city resists or not, those black villains’ thirst for slaughter will not very easily be appeased.”
“Oh, W-Will,” the girl said, nestling close to him (I remember his description of all this time so well), “the Sicilians hate the French for ever—we have a vendetta with them until the end of the world, which was begun at the Vespers of Santo Spirito, hundreds of years ago.”
She was very grateful, very sympathetic, and made no effort to disengage herself from the man she would have been so glad to love if she only could have forced herself.
It was pitch dark, and, except for the watch, they had the quarter-deck to themselves. Large parties of the Vanguards were on boat-duty, helping the fugitives; and the Neapolitans, on board a ship in which they had to make a voyage, hated even to hear the sea, and remained below crowded together. They might have waited longer had not they heard the cheery voice of the Admiral, who was in excellent spirits, as My Lady was exerting her charm and power of entertaining to the utmost in order to divert people from the situation, which was miserable enough. It seemed as if the whole Court had crowded themselves into the Admiral’s state-room.
Will saw no more of Rusidda in private that night, though she was in pretty constant conversation with him. And her whole nature seemed to have suffered some subtle change, but so deep that even he in time found himself transferring his attention to My Lady, and almost fascinated with the wonderful mastery over hearts, woman’s as well as man’s, which she possessed when she chose to exert her powers of fascination. She must in truth have been the most engaging woman who ever lived. Her sympathy was so flexible, and at the same time I might almost say audacious, and she added to it such a royal generosity of feeling, such a perfect command over her charm of personality. There is a serpent in the East, which the Admiral had seen in his Indian days, and described to us. This creature has a kind of hood of skin, which it can erect at pleasure. My Lady had a power of enhancing the effect of her beauty which was as extraordinary. I think the power of her sympathy was due to the vividness of her imagination. She could put herself in any man’s place, and build his castles in the air. Added to all this, she had a great passion for being admired and being loved. When I say loved, I mean deep liking and affection, not grosser love. That she wished to inspire a passion of affection I am sure; that she cared for the love, in the sense we often use the word, of any man except Mr. Greville and the Admiral, I do not believe, for I know how indignantly she resisted the advances of the Prince Regent, to whom a few years later Sir William, with unutterable baseness, did his best to bring her. It struck me often that this kind of love did not exist between the Hamiltons, but that she was deeply affectionate to Sir William.