Judah Azavédo returned home an altered man, yet still no one could understand him. He no longer morbidly shunned society, nor even cared to eschew the company of females, seeming as wholly careless and insensible to the effects of his presence as he had before thought too much about it. Some said he was scornfully proud; others, that it was impenetrable reserve: all agreed that he was changed, but only his most intimate friends could perceive that he was unhappy, and from some deep-seated sorrow essentially distinct from the feelings engrossing him when he left England, and that this one feeling it was which rendered him so totally indifferent to everything else.
Three, nearly four years elapsed, and Azavédo, in character and habits, remained the same. His father was dead, leaving him immense wealth, which he used nobly and generously, winning “golden opinions” from every class and condition of men, who, at the same time, wished that they could quite understand him; and so we must leave him to waft our readers over the salt seas, and introduce them to a more southern land and a very different person.
In a luxuriously furnished apartment of a beautiful little villa, a few miles from Lisbon, was seated a lady of that extraordinary beauty which ever fastens on the memory as by some strange spell. Not more than three or four and twenty, all the freshness of girlhood was so united to the more mature graces of woman, that it was often difficult to say to which of these two periods of life she belonged. Her large, lustrous, jet-black eye, and the small, pouting mouth, alike expressed at will either the mischievous glee of a mirth-loving girl or the high-souled intellectuality of maturer woman. Hair of that deep, dark brown, only to be distinguished from black when the sunshine falls upon it, lay in rich masses and braids around the beautifully shaped head, and giving, from the contrast, yet more dazzling fairness to the pure complexion of face and throat which it shaded; the brow, so “thought-thronged” when at rest, yet lit up, when eye and mouth so willed, with such arch, laughter-loving glee; but we must pause, for the pen can never do beauty justice, and even if it did, would be accused of exaggeration, although there yet remains those who, from personal acquaintance, can still bear witness to its truth.
A gentleman was standing near her as she sat on her sofa, in the busy idleness of embroidery; and as part of their conversation may elucidate our tale, we will record it briefly as may be.
“Then you refused him?”
“Can you ask?” and the lightning flash of the lady’s dark eye betrayed unwonted indignation. “He who would have so tempted a helpless girl of seventeen—I was then no more, though I had been married nearly a year—under such specious reasoning, that I dreamed not his drift till the words of actual insult came; sought to sow suspicion and distrust in my heart against my husband, his own brother, to serve his vile purposes: and you ask me if I refused him, when, being once more free to wed, he dared pollute me with his abhorred addresses! Julian, my fair cousin, have you so forgotten Inez?”
“If I had, that indignant burst would have recalled her; but of insult, remember, I knew nothing. You were married when so young, to a man so much older than yourself, that when I heard of his death, three years ago, I fancied, as you know is often the case with us, you would have married his younger brother, so much more suitable in point of qualities and years.”
“More suitable! Wrong again, cousin mine. If I did not love my husband, I respected, honoured him—yes, loved him too as a father; but as for Don Pedro, as men call him, Julian, I would rather have trusted the tender mercies of the Inquisition than I would him, and so I told him.”
“You could not have been so mad!”
“In sober truth, I was feeling too thoroughly indignant to weigh my words. It matters not, he dare not work me harm, for the secret on which alone he can, involves his safety as well as mine.”