"My sweet wife, wear what you best like. You need no superficial adorning."
"You hear, Lucrezia: make haste and finish my hair. Do not put it in curls to-day; braids are less trouble, and sooner done. You may put aside the diamond casket, Gina. Oh, there's my darling!" continued the countess, hearing the baby pass the door with its nurse. "Call him in." The count himself advanced, opened the door, and took his infant. "The precious, precious child!" exclaimed Adelaide, bending over the infant, which he placed on her knees. "Giovanni," she added, looking up eagerly to her husband's face, "do you think there ever was so lovely a babe sent on earth?"
He smiled at her earnestness—men are never so rapturously blind in the worship of their first-born as women. But he stooped down, and fondly pressed his lips upon her forehead, while he played with the little hand of the infant; and she yielded to the temptation of suffering her face to rest close to his.
"But it grows late," resumed the young mother, "and I suppose we ought to be going. Take the baby to its nurse, Lucrezia," she continued, kissing it fifty times as she resigned it.
The count had drawn behind the Lady Adelaide, where stood Gina. As his eyes happened to fall upon her, he was struck by the pallid sorrow which sat in her countenance. Ill-fated Gina! and he had been so absorbed these last few weeks in his new happiness! A rush of pity, mingled perhaps with self-reproach, flew to his heart. What compensation could he offer her? In that moment he remembered her last words at the interview in his wife's embroidery-room, and gave her a look. It was not to be mistaken. Love—love, pure and tender—gleamed from his eyes, and she answered him with a smile which told of her thanks, and that he was perfectly understood. Had any one been looking on, they could scarcely fail to become aware of their existing passion, and that there was a secret understanding between them.
And one was looking on. The Lady Adelaide's back was towards them, but in the large glass before her she had distinctly seen the reflection of all that took place. Her countenance became white as death, and her anger was terrible. "You may retire for the present," she said, in a calm, subdued tone, to the startled Gina, upon whose mind flashed somewhat of the truth; "and tell the Signora Lucrezia not to return until I call for her."
To describe the scene that ensued would be difficult. The shock to the young wife's feelings had been very great. That her husband was faithless to her, not only in deed but in heart, she doubted not. It was in vain he endeavored to explain all; she listened to him not. She thought he was uttering falsehoods, which but increased his treachery. Gina had once spoken of her fierce jealousy, but what was hers compared with the Lady Adelaide's? In the midst of her explosions of passion, Lucrezia, who had either not received, or misunderstood, her lady's message by Gina, entered. The maiden stood aghast, till, admonished by a haughty wave of the hand from the count, she hastened from the room. Later in the day, the Lord of Visinara quitted the castle, to pay the promised visit. His wife refused to go. "Mercy! mercy!" she exclaimed, in anguish, as she sat alone in her apartments, "to be thus requited by Giovanni—whom I so loved, my husband! my own husband![pg 190] Is it possible that a man can be guilty of treachery so deep? Would that I had died ere I had known his faithlessness, or ever seen him! Shame—shame upon it! to introduce his paramour into my very presence; an attendant on my person! Holy Virgin, that I should be so degraded! Sure a wife, young and beautiful, was never treated as I have been. Lowered in the eyes of my own servants; insulted by him who ought to have guarded me from insult; laughed at—ridiculed by her! Oh! terrible! terrible!"
As she spoke the last words, she rose, and unlocking the bright green cabinet, that of malachite marble already spoken of, took from thence a small bag of silver gilt. Touching the secret spring of this, she drew forth a letter, opened, and read it:
"'To the Lady Adelaide, Countess of Visinara.
"'You fancy yourself the beloved of Giovanni. Count of Visinara; but retire not to your rest this night, lady, in any such vain imagining. The heart of the count has long been given to another; and, you know, by your love for him, that such passion can never change its object. Had he met you in earlier life, it might have been otherwise. He marries you, for your lineage is a high one; and she, in the world's eye and in that of his own haughty race, was no fit mate for him."