'When we meet again I know you will not love me any more. That is love. But think of me always as a friend.'
He did not love her, certainly; nevertheless during the heat and tedium of the days that followed, certain cadences of that dulcet voice returned to him like a haunting melody, suggesting visions of a garden, fresh with splashing fountains, where Bianca wandered in company with other fair women playing on the viol and singing as in a vignette of the 'Dream of Polyphilo.'
And Bianca passed and was succeeded by others—sometimes two at a time; but it was finally the little ivory Death's-head which had belonged to the Cardinal Immenraet, the funereal jewel dedicated to an unknown Ippolita, that suggested to him the caprice of tempting Donna Ippolita Albonico.
[CHAPTER IX]
Donna Ippolita Albonico had a great air of princely nobility in her whole person, and bore some resemblance to Maria Maddalena of Austria, wife of Cosimo ii. of Medici, whose portrait by Suttermans is at Florence in the possession of the Corsinis. She affected a sumptuous style of dress—brocades, velvets, laces—and the high Medici collars which seemed the most appropriate setting to her superb and imperial head.
One day at the races, when seated beside her, Andrea was suddenly seized with the whim to get her to promise to come to the Palazzo Zuccari and receive the mysterious little clock dedicated to her namesake. Hearing his audacious words, she frowned, wavering between curiosity and prudence; but as he, nothing daunted, persevered in the attack, an irrepressible smile quivered on her lips. Under the shadow of her large hat with its white plumes, and with her lace-flounced parasol as a background, she was marvellously handsome.
'Tibi, Hippolyta! Then you will come? I shall be on the look-out for you all the afternoon, from two o'clock till evening—Is that settled?'
'You must be mad!'
'What have you to fear? I swear that I will not rob Your Majesty of so much as a glove. You shall remain seated as on a throne, as befits your regal state, and even in taking a cup of tea, you shall not lay aside the invisible sceptre you carry for ever in your imperial right hand. On these conditions is the grace accorded?'