Thus saying, he left the room. Eloise made no pretence of following him; and, as he closed the door, he could hear her light laugh at a jest--perhaps at himself--from some of her gay attendants.
Oh, how his heart sickened as, led by Antonio, he trod the way to the apartments of his wife!
"Leave me, Antonio," he said, "and return in an hour. There, busy not yourself with the apparel. Heaven knows whether I shall want it. Leave me, I say!"
"When you have leisure, my lord, I would fain speak a word or two in your private ear," said Antonio; "you rode so fast upon the road I could not give you some information I have obtained."
"Regarding whom?" asked Lorenzo, with a frowning brow; "your lady?"
"No, my lord, regarding the Signora d'Orco," replied the man.
But Lorenzo merely waved his hand for him to depart; and when he was gone, pressed his hands upon his burning temples, and sat gazing on the ground. His head swam; his heart ached; his mind was irresolute. In his own soul he compared Leonora d'Orco with Eloise de Chaumont. He asked himself if, fickle as she had shown herself to be, Leonora, once his wife, would have received him so on his return from labour and dangers.
He remembered the days of old, and answered the question readily. But then he turned to bitterer and more terrible inquiries. Was his wife faithful to him? or was he but the butt and ridicule of those whom, contrary to his plainest injunctions, she had brought from Rome?
He was of no jealous disposition. By nature he was frank and confiding; but her conduct had been such--was such, that those comments, so hard to bear--those suspicions, that sting more terribly than scorpions, had been busy round his ears even at the court of France.
In vain he had remonstrated, in vain had he used authority. He found her now, as he had left her in Rome, lighter than vanity itself. That accident, propinquity, and some interest in the accident she had brought upon him, with the vanity of winning one who had been considered cold and immovable, had induced her to give him what little love she could bestow on any one, and confirm it with her hand, he had long known. Long, too, had he repented of his rash marriage; but that carelessness of all things, that weariness of the world, that longing for repose, even were it the repose of the grave, which Leonora's fancied fickleness had brought upon him, had not been removed by his union with Eloise de Chaumont. A thousand evils had been added--evils the more terrible to a proud, high mind. He had never expected much; but he had believed Eloise innocent, though thoughtless; tender and affectionate, though light. But he had not found the tenderness after the ring was on her finger; and the very semblance of affection had soon died away.