"Write to me all that is in your heart. Fear not to speak out! I would know all. Farewell! Your loving
"Margharita."
Letter from the Count Leonardo di Marioni, the Palazzo Carlotti, Rome, to Miss Margharita Briscoe, Mallory Grange, Lincolnshire.
"Beloved Margharita: I will confess that your letter troubles me. If there be heaven for the woman who wrecked my life, there is no heaven for me, no religion, no God. You say that she is a good woman. She is then a good woman through fear. She seeks to atone, but she can never atone. She won a boy's passionate love; she wore his heart upon her sleeve; she cast it away at the moment of her pleasure. She broke the vows of an order, which should have been as sacred to her as the face of God to the angels; and she sent a Marioni to rot through a useless life in a miserable prison. The boy whose heart she broke, and the man whose life she severed, lives only to nurse his unchanging and unchangeable hate for her. Away with all other thoughts, my vengeance knows but one end, and that is death! Not sudden death, mind! but death—slow, lingering, and painful. I would see the struggle against some mysterious sickness, with my own eyes; I would stand by the bedside and mock, I would watch the cheeks grow thin and pale, and the eyes grow dim. She should know me in those last moments. She should see me, the wasted shadow of a man, myself on the threshold of the grave, standing by her bedside, cold and unpitying, and holding out toward her a white hyacinth.
"That is how I would have it, though thus it may not be. Yet speak to me not of any other vengeance save death. Let none other dwell for a moment in your thoughts, I solemnly charge you, Margharita.
"As to my search, it has not yet, alas, been successful. Think not that I have lost heart, or that I am discouraged. Never fear but that I shall find the man whom I seek—if not, there are others. I give myself one month longer; at the end of that time, if Paschuli be not found, another must serve my purpose.
"The Princess is much interested in you, and sends her love. She is impatient to take you under her care. I have told her that it will not be long—nor will it.
"Farewell, my child. Soon I shall send you the good news.—Yours,
"Leonardo di Marioni."