"All this is presumptive, yet terrible; but if you yield—if your faith in his honor is not great enough to triumph over it, do you believe that a true passion, that a deep love, such as he inspires, will also do so?"
"Ah, signora!" said Taddeo, with pain, "you have been generous long enough; you have had pity or time long enough to allow me at least to remain in doubt about your sentiments. It is cruel to choose such a time as this to own them."
"How know you what I feel?" said La Felina to Taddeo, who was about to go. "Think you the profound passion of which you speak can resist indifference and forgetfulness?—I spoke only of your sister."
"Is it true?" said the young man, forgetting all in his joy at this confession—"of my sister?"
"Yes; and her heart will not suffer her to be convinced as easily as you have been of the baseness of a man whose name and hand she was about to receive. To break the bonds which unite them, to change her love into contempt, the Marquise de Manlear will require evidence beyond dispute of a crime of which, as yet, you have only suspicions, and which my respect for Monte-Leone forces me to repudiate."
As she spoke, the Duchess, who sat on the ottoman yet, reached forth her arm to pick up a paper which lay on the carpet. Taddeo, following her motions, picked up the paper and handed it to her.
"What is that?" said she; "some letter I have dropped or which one of my visitors has lost."
"Count Monte-Leone sat there," and she pointed to a particular chair. She opened it mechanically, but scarcely had she done so than she uttered a cry of grief. Taddeo hurried to La Felina with a bottle of salts. She had let the paper fall, and it met his glance as it lay open. He saw a seal. Moved by a feeling of curiosity, which he could not repress, and hoping to discover the cause of La Felina's emotion, made confident also by the authentic character of the paper, Taddeo took and read it carefully. Scarcely had he done so than his strength gave way and he became pale as death. Sinking back in a chair he was crushed, as it were, by terror. The Duchess had recovered, and their countenances exhibited to each other the terrible feelings which filled their minds.
"Did you read?" said La Felina.
"I did," said Rovero. "Here it is."