He nodded assent, and began pacing the vast ante-chamber, which seemed to echo the violent beating of his heart. Hanging lamps of wrought iron shed an uncertain light over the stamped leather panelling of the walls, the carved oak chests, the antique busts on pedestals. Under a magnificently embroidered baldachin blazed the ducal arms: a unicorn on a field gules. A bronze card-tray, heaped with cards, stood in the middle of a table, and happening to cast his eye over them, Andrea noticed the one which Grimiti had just left lying on the top—Bonne chance!—The ironical augury still rang in his ears.
Mademoiselle now made her appearance. 'The duchess is feeling a little better,' she said. 'I think the Signor Conte might see her for a moment. This way, if you please.'
She was a woman past her first youth, rather thin and dressed in black, with a pair of gray eyes that glittered curiously under the curls of her false fringe. Her step and her movements generally were light, not to say furtive, as of one who is in the habit of attending upon invalids or of executing secret orders.
'This way, Signor Conte.'
She preceded Andrea though the long flight of dimly-lighted rooms, the thick soft carpets deadening every sound; and even through the almost uncontrollable tumult of his soul, the young man was conscious of an instinctive feeling of repulsion against her, without being able to assign an adequate reason for it.
Arrived in front of a door concealed by two pieces of tapestry of the Medicean period, bordered with deep red velvet, she stopped.
'I will go first and announce you. Please to wait here.'
A voice from within, which he recognised as Elena's, called, 'Christina!'
At the sound of her voice coming thus unexpectedly, Andrea began to tremble so violently that he thought to himself—'I am sure I am going to faint.' He had a dim presentiment of some more than mortal happiness in store for him which should exceed his utmost expectations, his wildest dreams—almost beyond his powers to support. She was there—on the other side of that door. All perception of reality deserted him. It seemed to him that he had already imagined—in some picture, some poem—a similar adventure, under the self-same circumstances, with these identical surroundings and enveloped in the same mystery, but of which another—some fiction of his own brain—was the hero. And now, by some strange trick of the imagination, the fictitious was confounded with the real, causing him an indescribable sense of confusion and bewilderment. On each of the pieces of tapestry was a large symbolical figure—Silence and Slumber—two Genii, tall and slender, which might have been designed by Primaticcio of Bologna, guarding the door. And he—he himself—stood before the door waiting, and on the other side of it was his divine lady. He almost thought he could hear her breathe.
At last Mademoiselle returned. Holding back the heavy draperies she smiled, and in a low voice said: