"Ay," she shuddered, "it is explained now. So, Gina Montani was this beloved one. I am his by sufferance—she, by love. Holy Mother, have mercy on my brain! I know they love—I see it all too plainly. And I could believe his deceitful explanation, and trust him. I told him I believed it on our wedding night. He did not know why he went to her house; habit, he supposed, or, want of occupation. Oh, shame on his false words! Shame on my own credulity!"
None of us forget the stanzas in Collins's Ode to the Passions:
"Thy numbers, Jealousy, to nought were fixed,
Sad proof of thy distressful state:
Of differing themes the veering song was mixed,
And now it courted love—now, raving, calling on hate."
And calling, indeed, upon hate, as she strode her chamber in a frenzy near akin to madness, was the lady Adelaide, when her attendant, Lucrezia, entered.
"My dear lady," she exclaimed, bursting into tears, as any crocodile might do—"my dear, dear young lady, I cannot know that you are thus suffering, and keep away from your presence. Pardon me for intruding upon you against orders."
The Lady Adelaide smoothed her brow, and the lines of her face resumed their haughtiness, as she imperiously ordered Lucrezia to quit the room. The heart most awake to the miseries of life wears to the world the coldest surface; and it was not in the Lady Adelaide's nature to betray aught of her emotions to any living being, save, perhaps, her husband.
"Nay, my lady, suffer me to remain yet a a moment: at least, while I disclose what I know of that viper."