As she concluded she left the apartment.
Camilla, at the thought of meeting Buondlemonte, and the circumstances, instinctively drew her veil over her burning cheeks.
“It is not I, Francesca,” she murmured, “who plots against thy peace; it is not I, Buondlemonte, who seeks to make thee swerve from thy knightly faith!”
For the space of half an hour Camilla Donati remained in a state of timorous apprehension and painful thought; at the expiration of that period, however, the door of the apartment she occupied again opened, and her mother re-entered. This time she was not alone—Buondlemonte was with her. His handsome countenance was flushed with excitement; the color mantled in his cheeks, and an unusual lustre danced in his bright eyes.
No sooner did his gaze rest on the maiden’s form than he rushed forward, and, bending his knee before her, took her unresisting hand and pressed it again and again to his lips.
“Dearest Camilla!” he exclaimed, in a whispered voice, “even thus have I dreamed of thee in my wanderings! even thus have I knelt before thee, and, unrebuked by a reproachful look, pressed thy gentle hand.”
The elder lady approached her daughter, and raising the veil which concealed her beautiful features she addressed Buondlemonte.
“This,” she said, as Buondlemonte’s ravished sight wandered from the flushing cheeks to the closed lids and trembling lips, “this is the bride I had reserved for thee. From childhood she has loved thee, and loves thee still.”
Buondlemonte’s enraptured exclamations prevented Camilla’s piteous appeal to her mother from being heard.
“From childhood she has been the star I have worshiped,” he replied, and rising to a seat beside her, his arm encircled her delicate waist. “None other,” he exclaimed with enthusiasm, as his eyes devoured the unfolding beauties which momentarily developed themselves, “none other shall claim the bride who has been reserved for me. If she will accept the homage of a heart that is all her own, my wedded wife she shall be before two suns have gilded the eastern sky.”