Leonora D'Orco: A Historical Romance

by G. P. R. James

CHAPTER XXXVII.

Two years had passed, and Leonora d'Orco had changed with everything around her. Alliances had been formed and broken; great commanders had won victories, and yielded to the stronger hand of Fate. Kings had descended from the proud pitch of power and betaken themselves to the humblest of beds; new combinations had been formed over the whole earth; enemies had become friends, friends enemies; love was burning soon to become cold; and there was coldness where the most ardent passion had once been felt.

I must be pardoned if I pause in my simple tale to show how the strange transforming-rod of time had affected Leonora d'Orco. Anguish, disappointment, anger--yes, I may say anger--had produced for a time those results which mental excitement almost of any kind fails not to work on the human frame.

When a whole year had elapsed without tidings or explanation from Lorenzo Visconti, her cheek might be seen to become paler and paler every day. Her limbs and form could not lose their grace, but they lost their beautiful contour. She became thin as well as pale; her bright eyes, too, lost somewhat of their lustre. She was still a young girl, and it was painful to see how her loveliness faded as her best hopes faded. She sought solitude; she avoided all society; she shunned especially that of men. Her father's was an exception. Parent and child seemed drawn closer together by the events which had inflicted a different kind of pain upon the heart of each. Often, after gazing at her for a while, cold, stern, remorseless Ramiro d'Orco would suddenly seek his cabinet, and, pressing his hands together till the fingers grew white, would utter but one word--"revenge!"

This state of things lasted but a few months, however, when suddenly a new change came over the beautiful girl. She had been studying hard and diligently, and strange books fell into her hands. It seemed as if from intellectual culture, new sources of happiness became opened to her. It might, indeed, be that pride came to her aid--that she resolved to cast away all thoughts of a man she deemed unworthy of her. It might be that she sought to cheer and solace her father. And yet there must have been something more, some stronger power at work within, for she showed that she was not one of those "to love again and be again deceived." Oh, no, she would not hear the very name of love.

The gayest, the brightest, the noblest, the most handsome strove for one smile, one token of her favour, but in vain. Yet she came forth from her solitude--she became the star of her father's little court. Amid admiring eyes and looks that seemed almost to worship her, she moved in beauty, but as cold as ice. Colour came back to her cheek, light to her eye, roundness and symmetry to every limb. The sweet, arching lips regained all their redness, but the heart seemed to have lost its warmth for ever.

The tenderness of the young girl, too, had apparently gone--the timidity, the shyness of youth. Not that she was hard, unkind, or harsh--oh, far from it. She was an angel of mercy in that city of Imola. She pleaded for the prisoner, turned often aside the blow from those appointed to die, solaced the sick and the needy. Her own great wealth, left solely to her disposal, raised up many a drooping head, cheered many a despairing heart. But now she dared to do what she would have shrunk from in the years passed by. She would approach her father, fearless, in his sternest moods, entreat, argue, remonstrate, and often, by the power of her will, bend him from his most settled purposes. Her beauty had acquired something of the character which her mind now assumed, and it must have been now that those pictures we have of her were taken. Though it was of the finest, the most delicate, the most exquisitely engaging style both in line and colouring, there was a dignity in the expression and in the whole air which the canvas can but faintly convey; and yet who could gaze upon her eyes, those wells of light, without seeing that there was some marvellous self-sustaining power within.

Leonora became fond, too, of the decoration of her person. Jewels, and cloth of gold, and rich embroidery decked those lovely hands and arms, or were wreathed in the clustering masses of her jetty hair, or arrayed those graceful limbs; and her tire-women had no longer reason to complain that she forgot her station or neglected her apparel as they had once done. To them she was gentleness itself; but the suitors who still would ask her hand could not but feel that their dismissal had something of the sting of scorn in it. She strove to soften it, but she could not; and the beautiful lip would curl, however mild the words might be, as if she thought it strange that any man could think she would condescend to bestow herself on him.

It must be said, however, that no one had any right to complain of having been led on to love merely to be refused. No approving smile ever encouraged the first advance; and if the attentions were too marked to be misunderstood, a sudden coldness gave the answer without a word. Once only she showed her contempt plainly. It was when a nobleman of pride and power declared he would appeal from her decision to her father. She told him her father had no power to wed her to a man whom she despised, and, if he ever had possessed it, he had given her fate into her own hands long before.

"I have his promise," she said--"a promise that, for good or bad, has not yet been broken to human being--that he will never, even by word, urge me to wed mortal man. So now go, my lord, and appeal to whom you will, but let me not see you any more. I am no man's slave, not even a father's."