"I shall know that you are happier and I shall be happier for that reason."
"Happier! you are mistaken; I am as happy with you as possible; how can the title of Donna Bustamente make me any happier?"
"It would put you out of reach of the insolent disdain of society."
"Society!" said Juliette; "you mean your friends. What is society? I have never known. I have passed through life and made the tour of the globe, but have never been able to discover what you call society."
"I know that you have lived hitherto like the enchanted maiden in her globe of crystal, and yet I have seen you shed bitter tears over the deplorable position in which you then were. I made an inward vow to offer you my rank and my name as soon as I should be assured of your affection."
"You failed to understand me, Don Aleo, if you thought that shame made me weep. There was no place in my heart for shame; there were enough other causes of sorrow to fill it and make it insensible to everything that came from without. If he had continued to love me, I should have been happy, though I had been covered with infamy in the eyes of what you call society."
It was impossible for me to restrain a shudder of wrath; I rose to pace the floor. Juliette detained me. "Forgive me," she said in a trembling voice, "forgive me for the pain I cause you. It is beyond my strength always to avoid speaking of him."
"Very well, Juliette," I said, stifling a painful sigh, "pray speak of him if it is a relief to you! But is it possible that you cannot succeed in forgetting him, when everything about you tends to direct your thoughts toward another life, another happiness, another love?"
"Everything about me!" said Juliette excitedly; "are we not in Venice?"
She rose and walked to the window; her white silk petticoat fell in numberless folds about her graceful form. Her chestnut hair escaped from the long pins of chased gold which only half confined it, and bathed her back in a flood of perfumed silk. She was so lovely with the faint touch of color in her cheeks, and her half loving, half bitter smile, that I forgot what she said and went to her to take her in my arms. But she had drawn the curtains partly aside, and looking through the glass, as the moon's moist beams were beginning to break through the clouds, she cried: "O Venice! how changed thou art! how beautiful thou once wert in my eyes, and how desolate and deserted thou dost seem to-day!"