DON TOMMASO.
How!
You surely will not rouse his fatal wrath?
Annicca, listen: if your doubts were true,
He whose fierce love guards her with sleepless eyes,
More like the passion of some wild, dumb creature,
With prowling jealousy and deadly spring,
Forth leaping at the first approach of ill,
Than the calm tenderness of human fathers;
He surely had been keen to scent the danger.
I saw him at the ball—as is his wont,
He mingled not among the revellers,
But like her shadow played the spy on her.
ANNICCA.
A word would stir less deeply than you dread.
DON TOMMASO.
Ah, there you err; he knows no middle term.
At once he would accept as fact the worst
Of your imaginings; his rage would smite
All near him, and rebound upon himself;
For, as I learn, Don John brings royal orders
For the Queen's gallery; he would dismiss
The Prince as roughly as a begging artist.
Make no such breach just now betwixt the court
And our own kindred.
ANNICCA.
Be it so, Tommaso.
I will do naught in haste.
DON TOMMASO.
Watch thou and wait.
A slight reproof might now suffice the child,
Tame as a bird unto a gentle voice.
ANNICCA.
My mind misgives me; yet will I find patience.
SCENE III.
Night in RIBERA'S Garden. DON JOHN alone.
DON JOHN.
In any less than she, so swift a passion,
So unreserved, so reckless, had repelled.
In her 't is godlike. Our mutual love
Was born full-grown, as we gazed each on each.
Nay, 't was not born, but like a thing eternal,
It WAS ere we had consciousness thereof;
No growth of slow development, but perfect
From the beginning, neither doomed to end.
Her garden breathes her own warm, southern beauty,
Glowing with dewy and voluptuous bloom.
Here I am happy—happy to dream and wait
In rich security of bliss. I know
How brief an interval divides us now.
She hastes to meet me with no less impatience
Than mine to clasp her in my arms, to press
Heart unto heart, and see the love within
The unfathomable depths of her great eyes.
She comes. Maria!
Enter MARIA, half timid, half joyous.
MARIA.
My lord! you have been waiting?
DON JOHN.
Darling, not long; 't was but my restless love
That drove me here before the promised hour.
So were I well content to wait through ages
Upon the threshold of a joy like this,
Knowing the gates of heaven might ope to me
At any moment.