"Mark it what you please," she answered. "Here is the money in this purse when you bring the drug; but be speedy."
The old man gazed into her eyes for a moment as if to read her real purposes; then bidding her remain beneath the arch, he hurried away. In a few minutes he returned with a small vial containing a white powder, and not only gave it to her, but showed her how to apply it to the blade of the dagger so that the slightest scratch would prove fatal. "Mix it with water," he said, "and then a drop not bigger than a drop of dew will do; and remember, daughter, this is no common drug, such as vulgar, unlearned assassins use. Its effects are instant, either taken by the lips or infused into the veins. Be cautious, therefore; and mind, when you apply it, use a thick gauntlet."
"There--there--there is the money," said Leonora, taking the vial eagerly; and then she added, speaking to herself, "Now, man, I defy you. I have my safety in my own hands," and, paying the monk the money, she remounted her horse and rode down the hill.
The old monk, while he counted the money carefully, gazed after her, muttering to himself, "Now that is for some fair rival, belike, or else for some faithless lover. Mayhap her husband has played her false. Ay, Heaven help us! we have always some good excuse for covering over our real intentions from the eyes of others. To save her honour at the expense of her life! That is a likely tale indeed! We have no Lucretias now-a-days except the pope's daughter, and she is a Lucretia of another sort."
Whatever the old man in his hardened nature might think, Leonora d'Orco had no purpose but the one she stated. She had long felt the necessity of the means of self-defence. She had long known that the only dread she ever experienced now, would vanish if she possessed the immediate power of life or death over an assailant or over herself. The dagger she had bought in Florence some weeks after the burning of the Villa Morelli, but she doubted her strength--not her courage--to use it with effect. But when the least wound would prove fatal, the weapon had a higher value. "One scratch upon my arm or upon his hand," she said to herself, "and I am safe from worse than death."
It must have been a terrible state of society which led a young girl to contemplate such a resource as a blessing. I cannot venture to give anything like a picture of that state. Suffice it that the fears of Leonora d'Orco were not superfluous, nor her precautions without cause.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
I have heard it said that the world is weary of the picturesque in writing, tired of landscape painters, eager only for the tale or for the characters--the pepper and salt of fiction. So be it. But yet there is something in a scene--in the place, in the very spot where any great events are enacted, which gives not only an identity, but a harmony to the narrative of these events. Imola, with its old castle and its sombre walls, now repaired and strengthened by the care of Ramiro d'Orco, lay, like the hard and rugged stone of the peach, in the centre of more sweet and beautiful things.
That was the age of villa building in Italy, and, as I have shown in a previous part of this work, some of the noblest architects that the world ever produced had already appeared, and produced specimens of a new and characteristic style, unsurpassed by any other efforts. Imola was surrounded by villas, but there was one more costly and extensive than any of the rest, which hung upon the hill-side, with gardens, and terraces, and fountains round about. The villa now belonged to Ramiro d'Orco, and thither he would often retire, after the labours of the day were over, to walk, solitary and thoughtful, as was his wont, under the great stone-pines which lined the avenue.
It was the favourite home of Leonora; for, though she was so much changed in every habit, if not in every thought, there was one exception--she still loved to sit beneath the trees or upon a terrace, whence she could see over a wide landscape. She no longer sought absolute solitude, it is true; she suffered herself not to be plunged into those deep fits of thought, which had been her only comfort during Lorenzo's long absence at Naples. Usually she had one of her maids with her, well-educated girls, who could converse, though not very profoundly; and their light talk, though it did not always wean her mind from the subjects on which it was bent, just sufficed to ripple the too still waters of meditation.