The marquis surveyed her critically, just as a painter might examine a fine picture. He looked at her pale, pearly skin, her scarlet lips, her delicately-chiselled nose, and her low, wide forehead, so like that of the Capitoline Venus. Then he gazed into her dark, flashing eyes, at once so languishing and so passionate, with the beautiful arched eyebrows that gave such finish to their splendor. The black hair, like a frame of ebony, surrounded the face, and brought out the graceful oval of her cheeks. Strozzi then followed the luxurious outline of her well-developed bust, prisoned in a bodice of blue velvet, which rested on her white shoulders like an azure cloud upon the bosom of a snowy mountain-peak. The skirt, also of blue velvet, was short in front, that it might not conceal a fairy foot encased in blue satin slippers; but, behind, it fell in a long train, whose rich folds lay on the carpet, perfecting the grace and elegance of the beautiful living picture.
"You are certainly charming," said Strozzi, at last—"quite charming enough to bewitch a dozen German princes, supposing your husband to offer no impediment to the spell."
Here she drew out a fan of coral and gold. and, opening it with a snap, began to fan herself. "Caro amico," said she, "you speak as if you were ignorant of the character and virtues of Count Canossa, when you yourself are the very tradesman that sold me to him."
"You use very strong expressions, Lucretia."
"Do I? Not stronger than are warranted by the transaction. You sold me to him to rid yourself of your mother's dying charge, and you did it, although you knew him to be a man so depraved that nothing on earth was sacred in his eyes—not even the virtue of his wife."
"Why, that," replied the marquis significantly, "is so much the better for you."
"You mean that otherwise he would not have married me?" asked
Lucretia.
"I mean that he would have examined more carefully into the truth of the rumor which accused the sister of the Strozzi of having a liaison with a gondolier; of having fled with him to Padua, and of having been caught and brought hack to Venice, while her patrician lover was sent to the galleys."
"I wish he had done so," was the reply, "and then you would have been compelled to save my honor by allowing me to marry Giuseppe. Do not laugh so heartlessly, Ottario. I loved him not only because of his manly beauty, but because he was honorable and worthy of a woman's purest love. His only fault was that of having loved me. You sent him to the galleys; and I—I, too, have been condemned to the galleys, and chained to a felon for life. Well I know that he covered my indiscretions with his name for a stipulated sum, which my generous brother paid to save my reputation, and he gambled it away before the expiration of a year. Our palace resembles a ship that has been visited by corsairs. It contains nothing but a pile of lumber, for which not even a pawnbroker would give a bajocco. Were it not for your alms, the Countess Canossa would starve."
"Alms, call you my gifts?" said Strozzi, casting his eyes over her rich toilet. "They dress you up handsomely, methinks."