Still was he compelled, by an irresistible fascination, as it were, to unravel what appeared to him so mysterious an affair. He endeavoured to believe it to be as she affirmed; he endeavoured to compose himself; he took a book, but his eyes wandered insensibly.
Thrice he hesitated—thrice he shut the door of the apartment; till at last, a curiosity, unaccountable even to himself, propelled him to seek Matilda.
Mechanically he moved along the passage. He met one of the domestics—he inquired where Matilda was.
“In the grand saloon,” was the reply.
With trembling steps he advanced towards it. The folding doors were open. He saw Matilda and the stranger standing at the remote end of the apartment.
The stranger’s figure, which was towering and majestic, was rendered more peculiarly striking by the elegantly proportioned form of Matilda, who leant on a marble table near her; and her gestures, as she conversed with him, manifested the most eager impatience, the deepest interest.
At so great a distance, Verezzi could not hear their conversation; but, by the low murmurs which occasionally reached his ear, he perceived that whatever it might be, they were both equally interested in the subject.
For some time he contemplated them with mingled surprise and curiosity—he tried to arrange the confused murmurs of their voices, which floated along the immense and vaulted apartment; but no articulate sound reached his ear.
At last Matilda took the stranger’s hand: she pressed it to her lips with an eager and impassioned gesture, and led him to the opposite door of the saloon.
Suddenly the stranger turned, but as quickly regained his former position, as he retreated through the door; not quickly enough, however, but, in the stranger’s fire-darting eye, Verezzi recognised him who had declared eternal enmity at the cottage on the heath.