“That you are aut Diabolus, aut Byron? I know not which of the two the English regard as the worse. Well, suppose I do not admit your right to tell me of your love: I suppose I dare not dispute your right to love, but I can dispute your right to tell me of it—that is, if it exists.”
“If it exists? Heavens! my beloved creature, would I have followed you here from England if I did not love you to distraction?”
“It needs such extraordinary self-sacrifice on the part of an Englishman to leave England for Italy! I think you were glad to make some excuse—even so feeble a one as that of being in love with an Italian woman—to make a journey to Naples. But I forgot; you were in Italy once before, were you not?”
“Yes; I was in some parts,—the north—Tuscany—Florence—never here—no, never here.”
“Never here? ah, yes; now I remember well. You said you had never been to Sorrento. I wonder did I hold out any inducement to you to come to Sorrento?—you must have been studying a map of our bay, for you knew by name every landmark, every island, when I tried to be your cicerone just now.”
The glance that he cast at her after giving a little start had something of suspicion in it.
“Everyone knows the landmarks of the lovely Bay of Naples,” said he; “but I—ah, my beloved, did you not tell me all its beauties when we first met in London six months ago? Had you no idea that every word which fell from your lips—even the words in which you described the scenery around your home—should be burnt into my memory for evermore? Ah, sweet one, will you never listen to me? Does my devotion count for nothing with you?”
“My husband,” she whispered with a tremulous downward glance—the glance of love’s surrender—he knew it well: he was a man of considerable experience of woman in all her phases. He knew that he had not been fooled by the Marchesa.
“Did not you tell me that you detested him?” he cried. “If a husband treats a wife cruelly, as he has treated you, he has wilfully forfeited all claim to her devotion. There are some acts so atrocious that it is impossible to find an adequate punishment for them.”
“You think that even if the punishment were a crime in the eyes of the world it would be sanctified by heaven if it were meted out to a monster of cruelty?” The Marchesa was looking at him through half-closed eyes. He saw that her hands were clenched tightly, and he did not fail to notice how tumultuously her bosom was heaving. He was exultant. He had conquered. That opportune word which he had thrown in regarding her husband’s cruelty had overcome her last scruple.