“You do not look so happy as you did last Saturday, Ginevra. You are agitated and excited to-day. Will you not tell me the reason?”
I was tempted to make her a thorough, sincere confession; but the moment I was about to begin I was struck with the impossibility of speaking in that angelic place of what seemed elsewhere only natural, excusable, and almost legitimate.
Seeing I made no reply, she gently said:
“Lorenzo has not yet come home. Of course his absence afflicts you. Be patient and forbearing, I conjure you, Ginevra.”
Her words caused me a kind of irritation, though I was glad to elude her previous question, and I hastily replied:
“Livia, you require too much of me. Some day I may become patient and forbearing, but at present it is impossible.”
“Gina, Gina, do not say so,” said she in the tone in which she used to correct the faults of my childhood.
“O Livia! your poor sister finds life hard, I assure you. How happy you are!...”
“Yes, I am happy,” she softly replied.
“Who would have said it, however,” I continued in an agitated tone, “when Lorenzo came to woo me with so many assurances of affection, so many promises of happiness?... That all this should prove false and illusory!... Oh! when I think of it, I no longer have the strength to....”