"I know that you have suffered, and I have wept for your sufferings, while I have been impotent to lessen them. Speak but the word—say that you are that which, by the laws of God and man, you have been for these five long years, and I open your doors and restore you to freedom. I ask you not to love me; but I implore you to accept my love, and acknowledge yourself to be my wife; for well I know that, the acknowledgment once made, you are too honorable, too virtuous, to sully the name you are willing to bear. Oh, Laura, my peerless Laura! I will make amends for all that I have inflicted upon you through the madness of my love. I have wealth unbounded—a noble name, high station: all shall be yours. See—I am at your feet. Call me your husband, and henceforth I live to be your willing slave!"
"Never!" exclaimed she, starting from her seat, and receding in horror from his touch. "My body you hold in bondage, but my spirit is free; and it is away from this gloomy prison, far away, mingling with that of my spouse before Heaven, my Eugene, my lord and husband."
"Silence!" shrieked Strozzi, starting to his feet. "Silence! or you will drive me mad! And be assured that as long as you defy me, just so long will I hold you in bondage."
"You may not live forever, marquis, for the Strozzis, like other men, are mortal; and death, perchance, may liberate me, without your permission. But live or die, as you choose; I shall find means to rejoin Eugene, and this conviction gives me strength to endure your persecutions."
"The Marchioness Bonaletta is too proud and chaste to be the mistress of any man," returned Strozzi, with some return of courtesy.
"What do you know of me?—I counsel you not to build your hopes upon any estimate you may have formed of my notions of honor, for they will sorely deceive you, if you do."
Before the marquis had time to reply to these defiant words, the door opened, and Barbesieur, holding a letter in his hand, entered the room.
Laura frowned, and asked Strozzi by what right her room was thus invaded by a stranger. "I do not desire his presence," she said. "Be so good as to conduct him to your own apartments."
"I am not so easily conducted, most amiable sister," returned Barbesieur. "I have come to deliver a message from your father, after which I shall take my leave without the least regret. We are about to go to war with Germany, and I am about to receive a general's commission in the French army, so that I have no time to lose in forcing my company upon you."
"You a general's commission! You that were once publicly disgraced by—"