"'I really don't think I can stand much more of this stage business of yours,' the Chevalier said indifferently, and in a bored manner. But the door opened, and a girl in a white night dress, with her hair undone, and death in her face, rushed up to old Vertua, raised him, took him in her arms, and cried, 'Oh, father, I have heard it all--I know it all! Have you lost everything?--everything? You have still your Angela. What would be the use of money if you had not Angela to take care of you. Oh, father! don't humiliate yourself more before this despicable, inhuman creature. It is not we, it is he who is poor and miserable in all his despicable riches, for he stands there in the most gruesome, comfortless loneliness. There is not one loving heart in the wide world to cling to his breast, to open to him when he is like to despair of life--of himself. Come, father, away from this house with me; let us go as quickly as we can, that the horrible creature may not gloat over our sorrow.'
"Vertua sank half senseless into a chair, whilst Angela knelt down before him, took his hands, kissed them and stroked them, and told over, with childlike prolixity, all the accomplishments and acquirements which she possessed, with which she would be able to support him comfortably, imploring him with the warmest tears to have no fear, inasmuch as life would, for the first time in her experience, begin to possess a real value and delightsomeness for her when--not for the enjoying of it, but for her father--she should stitch, sew, sing, play the guitar.
"What obdurate sinner could have remained indifferent at the sight of Angela beaming in the fulness of her heavenly beauty, comforting her old father with sweet, delicious words, the deepest affection, and the most childlike purity and goodness streaming from the depths of her heart?
"Things were very different with the Chevalier. An entire pandemonium of torture and pangs of conscience awoke within him. Angela seemed to him to be the punishing angel of God, before whose shining glory the cloud-shroud of sinful deception which had surrounded him vanished away, so that with terror he clearly saw himself in all his repulsive nakedness.
"And through the midst of those hell-flames, which were consuming and raging in his heart, there came piercing a heavenly, pure beam of radiance, whose light was the sweetest bliss and the very joy of heaven, though the brightness of this ray had the effect of rendering the inexpressible torture more terrible.
"The Chevalier had never known love before; and the instant he saw Angela he was seized by the most passionate affection for her, and, at the same time, with the destroying pain of complete hopelessness, for surely there could be no hope for one who had appeared to her in the light in which he had.
"He longed to say something, but his tongue seemed to be paralysed. At length he so far mastered himself as to say, stammering, and in a trembling voice, 'Signor Vertua, listen. I have not won anything from you--nothing of the kind. There is my strong box; take it, it is yours. Yes; and I have to pay you more than that. I am in your debt. Take it, take it!'
"'Oh, my girl!' cried Vertua. But Angela went up to the Chevalier, beamed a proud look upon him, and said, gravely and calmly, 'Learn, Chevalier, that there are higher things than money and possessions--things which you have no knowledge of--which, while filling our souls with the happiness of heaven, make us spurn your gifts with compassion and contempt. Keep the mammon upon which lies the curse which pursues you, heartless, accursed gambler.'
"'Yes!' cried the Chevalier wildly; 'cursed, cursed in verity may I be, if ever this hand of mine touches a card again. And if you repel me, Angela, it will be you who will bring inevitable destruction upon me. Oh, you don't understand me. You must think me mad; but you will know it all when I lie before you with my skull shivered into fragments. Angela, it is life or death with me. Adieu!'
"With this he dashed away in utter desperation. Vertua thoroughly understood him; he saw what had been passing in his heart, and tried to make the lovely Angela comprehend how certain eventualities might arise which would render it necessary to accept the Chevalier's offers. Angela was afraid to allow herself to understand her father; she did not think it would ever be possible to regard the Chevalier otherwise than with contempt; but that mysterious chain of events which often forms itself within the profundities of the human heart, without our cognisance, brought to pass that which seemed unimagined--undreamt of.