"Good faith, no!" said D'Aubin; "but she is coming in! Farewell, and return if you can to-morrow, my good Bartholo."
Without further reply, the page glided out of the room; and while D'Aubin, gazing upon Beatrice as she advanced towards the house, pondered over all the poisonous words that had just been dropped into his ear, Bartholo glided down the small and narrow staircases that led to a far part of the building, laughing with a bitter laugh as he went, and murmuring something of a goodly scheme well spoiled.
CHAPTER XXXI.
D'Aubin passed a restless and unquiet night; and the next morning his pale countenance and languid look re-awakened in the bosom of Beatrice of Ferrara all those apprehensions and anxieties which are treacherous internal allies of the ambitious tyrant love. From that day, however, the conduct of Philip d'Aubin underwent a change, slight, indeed, to appearance, but yet of no small import. His demeanour grew softer, tenderer, more solicitous towards his fair companion; his conversation was all of love. From every bright thing in external nature, from the stores of history, or the pages of imagination, he drew matter for comparing, and illustrating, and typifying the ardent passion of the heart. Beatrice listened, pleased, and joined in, and felt that she was beloved; and spoke her own warm feelings boldly, so long as the words were general. Her eyes, and the varying colour of her cheek, told all the rest: and much would they discuss the evil and the good of strong and fiery passion; and to their hearts' content they proved that it was aught but a fault, a capability in a bright spirit, a proof of superior energy of heart and mind. But then Beatrice said it must be ruled and governed by ties and principles as strong and energetic as itself; and D'Aubin, though he did not venture to dissent, went on in the praise of intense and vehement love without restriction, and brought forth a thousand examples in which that passion, in what he called nobler and more generous times, had been carried to a height unknown in their own age. Still, on every point where he and Beatrice might differ, he touched the subject lightly, and then left it; pointing still, by many an endearing name and soft caress, the object and application of all his bland eloquence. Beatrice hoped and believed, and was happy; and now that her bosom was at rest--that the conflict of hope, and fear, and passion, which had ceaselessly agitated her during the last four years, was at an end, and her heart reposed in peace on the conviction of being loved, and the prospect of future happiness, her demeanour grew milder, softer, tenderer; it lost the wild and eager fire which it had acquired, and fell back into all that was sweet, and womanly, and gentle. The days passed on, too, in peace; for D'Aubin asked no questions upon the many matters which might have called up subjects painful to either; and Beatrice, ere she spoke of the past, wished all those things completed which would put an irrevocable seal upon the happiness of the present. Then she thought that addressing her husband and her lover both in one, she could tell him that all he had done amiss was forgiven; that he had been ever loved, even in his errors; and that her eye had been ever watchful, her hand ever stretched out, to snatch him from the consequences of his faults, and to lead him away from those faults themselves.
At length, on one bright and sunshiny morning in June, when the clear lustre of health had fully returned into D'Aubin's eye, and his step was as firm as it had been four months before, the lovers sat together in a wood near the chateau, passing away, under the shadow of the old trees, the hot hours of summer noon. She scarcely knew why, but with a lingering touch of timidity, to which she yielded willingly, without trying to scrutinise it, Beatrice had ever, in her interviews with D'Aubin, kept some of her women round her; and although, feeling that there was much to be said between them which were better said without witnesses, she had day after day determined to dispense with their presence, still there they sat at a little distance, plying the busy needle on the object which served to occupy their discreet eyes. Their presence was no great restraint, it is true, but still D'Aubin found it burthensome; and, resolved to hesitate no longer in his purposes, he besought Beatrice to send the women away. With a blushing cheek, and somewhat of an agitated tone, Beatrice complied; and then, turning away her head, played idly with the flowers that gemmed the grass on which they sat.
D'Aubin paused and hesitated, even at that moment, if he should go on; but his determination soon returned, and gliding his arm round her waist, while with his right hand he took hers unresistingly, he said, "Beatrice, dear Beatrice, do we not love one another?"
Beatrice replied nothing; but the trembling of her whole frame was a sufficient answer; and D'Aubin went on. "Hear me, Beatrice, and believe me, when I say that I love you with my whole heart and soul, with the deepest, the truest, the most lasting affection; that I love you better than anything on earth; and that for you I am ready to abandon friends, and country, and station altogether."
He paused, and Beatrice replied in a low voice, "But, thank God! no such sacrifice is necessary, D'Aubin."
"If it be, I am ready to make it," pursued the Count, in a voice to which deep and sincere passion lent all its earnestness; "if it be, I am ready to make it. Oh, Beatrice, you know not how I love you! but I must be loved with the like affection, not with the cold and formal love of fashion and society--idols to which I have only bowed because I found no better godhead. Now I have found a power above,--now I know that, however I have erred, I have loved you ever, and you alone; that without you the earth would be one vast piece of desolation to my eyes. Wherever you are, is henceforth my country; wherever you dwell, is henceforth my home; for you I will sacrifice everything, for you I will regret nothing. Tell me, Beatrice, is your love for me the same?"
"Can you doubt it, Philip?" she replied, "can you doubt it?"