My heart gave a leap. What was he about to tell me? What new hope was to be dashed to the ground?
“Great goodness!” said I, giving immediate utterance to the only object of my mortal terror, “have you come to tell me Donna Faustina is at Naples, and Lorenzo has left me again?”
“Donna Faustina? Oh! no. Would to heaven it were merely a question of her, and that you had nothing more serious to apprehend on Lorenzo's part than another foolish journey, were she to lead him beyond the Black Sea! No, it is not a question of your husband's heart, which preoccupies you more than he deserves, but of his property and yours.”
I breathed once more as I heard these words, and my relief was so visible that Lando was out of patience.
“How singular and unpractical women are!” exclaimed he. “Here you are apparently grown calm because I have reassured you on a point less important in reality than the affair in question.”
“I ought to be the judge of that, ought I not, Lando?” said I gravely.
“Of course. I will not discuss their merits with you. But remember, my dear cousin, if I am correctly informed, it is a question of losing all you possess! Lorenzo has been playing to a frightful degree! He made such good resolutions before me, as he was leaving Paris, that he does me the honor of concealing himself as much from me as from you. He had gone quite far enough before he went to Milan; but, since his return—influenced, I suppose, by a mad wish of diverting his mind from other things, and perhaps of repairing the breaches that had begun to alarm even him—he has added stock-gambling to the rest. Some one heard him say the other day that he expected to triple his fortune, or lose all he possessed. One of the two was indeed to happen. My dear cousin!... he has not tripled it, and the other alternative is seriously to be feared.”
I listened with attention, but likewise with a calmness that was not merely exterior.
“You do not seem to understand,” said he with more impatience than before, “that you are in danger of [pg 768] losing everything you have? Yes, everything!... What would you say, for example,” continued he, looking around, “if you were to see all the magnificence that now surrounds you, and to which you are accustomed, disappear; if this house and all the precious objects it contains were to vanish for ever from your sight?”
“I should say.... But it is of little consequence what I should say or think in such a case. For the moment nothing is lost, and, when our lawsuit in Sicily is once gained, all fear of ruin will be chimerical. Allow me, therefore, to decline meanwhile participating in your fears.”