"My whole life has been useless," she thought, "and now, now, just when I might have found an object, I have flung it away like a rag! But what object could I have had?" she asked herself presently. "Well, family life is supposed to be an object. Everything is relative. The good wife who makes a good family contributes no less than the worker or the moralist to the perfection of society. I have never made anything but dreams. I remember the dream I had the second night after our arrival. I thought Madame Makuline had given me a castle."
Just then she heard a faint rustle, and something like a scarce perceptible but tender groan emitted by some minute dreaming creature.
"It's the swallow! Does it also dream? Do birds think and dream? I expect they do. Why, I wonder, is this one all alone? And he!"
She felt a sudden movement of joy, thinking that this day the letter from Antonio would surely come!
The hours passed. Post hour came, but there was no post. Regina went out of doors to hide her agitation, to forget, to flee from the extravagant fears which assailed her. As on the preceding day, she wandered in the woods and lanes, by the river-side, upon which beat the full rays of the sun. Everywhere fear followed her like her shadow.
"He has not forgiven me. He will not write. In his place I would do the same. He wants to punish me by his silence, or he is coming to take me back by force. A wife has to follow her husband, otherwise he can demand a legal separation. What would become of me if he did that?"
Pride would not allow her to confess that if Antonio insisted on her return she would go to him at once merely to be forgiven. But as the slow hours rolled on her pride weakened. Memory assailed her with consuming tenderness. She sickened at the thought of passing her life's best years deprived of love.
"Oh, why didn't I think of all this before?" she asked herself. And she remembered she had thought of it, but so vaguely, so lightly, that her faint fears had not held her back from folly. In an opposing sense she reasoned thus.
"It's my character made up of discontent and contradiction which tosses me hither and thither like a wave of the sea. Why have I changed so soon? If I go back to Rome I shall be sorry immediately that I didn't carry out my project, which is perhaps better than I am now thinking it. Perhaps after all he thinks it reasonable, and is delaying to write that I may see he accepts it. Oh! there's a bit of four-leaved clover! Yes; that's what it is. He accepts my plan."
She stooped, but did not pick the four-leaved clover. What luck could it bring to her?