'Is it long since you have been to confession?' he asked, in a louder and sterner voice.
'No!' replied the young woman, in the lowest possible tone.
'Apropos,' said the Marquis, as he covered the frightfully distorted and blue face of the corpse with the coverlet, 'shall we not go to the grand festival at the church to-day? The procession begins exactly at twelve o'clock. I shall order the carriage--we really must not miss it.'
He returned to the dressing-room. The Marchioness was sitting in a large cushioned lounging-chair, the thick tresses of her dark hair hanging negligently down, her lips and cheeks as pale as death, and her hands resting listlessly on her lap.
'What is the matter, my dear child?' asked the Marquis, inwardly triumphing at her distress, but with fair and friendly words upon his lips. 'You have risen too early, my little Laura; and you have also fatigued yourself in trying to dress without assistance. Where is Pipetta? I shall ring for her now.' He pulled the bell-rope--approached his wife--slightly kissed her brow--and then left her apartments.
At mid-day, when all the bells of the churches were pealing, the Marquis's splendid state carriage, with four horses adorned with gilded trappings, stood before the gate of his palace, and a crowd of richly-dressed pages, footmen, and grooms, were in waiting there. Presently the Marquis appeared in his brilliant court costume, with glittering stars on his breast, his hat in one hand, whilst with the other he led his young and beautiful but deadly-pale wife. With the utmost attention he handed her down the marble steps, and while her countenance looked as cold and stony as that of a statue, his eyes flashed with a fire that was unusual to them. The servants hurried forwards, the carriage-door was opened, the noble pair entered it, and it drove off towards the town. In the crowded streets the foot passengers turned round to gaze at it, and exclaimed to each other, 'There go a happy couple!'
The architect had disappeared. No one suspected that on the day of the grand festival he lay dead--a blue and terrible-looking corpse--amidst boots and shoes, at the bottom of a noble young dame's wardrobe; or that, the following night, without shroud or coffin, his body was secretly transported by the lady's faithful servants to a neighbouring mountain, and there thrown into a deep cave. But the lady paid a large sum to the convent of the Magdalens for the sake of his soul's repose.
The monk Gregorio--the accommodating and favourite confessor of the fashionable world--was also soon after missing. But he was not dead--he lingered for some years in a subterranean prison belonging to a monastery of one of the strictest orders: a punishment to which he had been condemned through the influence of the Marquis d'Arena.
That the confessional No. 6 was removed, will be easily believed.
The Marquis never alluded to these events before his wife. When they appeared in public together, as also in society at his own home, he treated her with respect, often with attention. But he never again spoke to her in private, nor did he ever again enter those apartments which had once been the scene of so dreadful a tragedy.