Beatrice’s head leaned against Despard’s shoulder as she reclined against him, sustained by his arm. Her face was upturned; a face as white as marble, her pure Grecian features showing now their faultless lines like the sculptured face of some goddess. Her beauty was perfect in its classic outline. But her eyes were closed, and her wan, white lips parted; and there was a sorrow on her face which did not seem appropriate to one so young.
{Illustration: “HE LEAPED FROM THE CARRIAGE TOWARD HER, AND CAUGHT HER IN HIS ARMS."}
“Look,” said Langhetti, in a mournful voice. “Saw you ever in all your life any one so perfectly and so faultlessly beautiful? Oh, if you could but have seen her, as I have done, in her moods of inspiration, when she sang! Could I ever have imagined such a fate as this for her?”
“Oh, Despard!” he continued, after, a pause in which the other had turned his stern face to him without a word—“Oh, Despard! you ask me to tell you this secret. I dare not. It is so wide-spread. If my fancy be true, then all your life must at once be unsettled, and all your soul turned to one dark purpose. Never will I turn you to that purpose till I know the truth beyond the possibility of a doubt.”
“I saw that in her face,” said Despard, “which I hardly dare acknowledge to myself.”
“Do not acknowledge it, then, I implore you. Forget it. Do not open up once more that old and now almost forgotten sorrow. Think not of it even to yourself.”
Langhetti spoke with a wild and vehement urgency which was wonderful.
“Do you not see,” said Despard, “that you rouse my curiosity to an intolerable degree?”
“Be it so; at any rate it is better to suffer from curiosity than to feel what you must feel if I told you what I suspect.”
Had it been any other man than Langhetti Despard would have been offended. As it was he said nothing, but began to conjecture as to the best course for them to follow.