“Then let us advance a step further,” he said, in the same quiet, serious manner. “It is but natural you desire to escape from him. He is repugnant to you; perhaps you loathe him, and yet you wear a mask of pretended happiness! Surely you cannot take up life beside a husband whom you secretly despise! You are a woman who desires to love and be loved, a woman who should marry a man worthy your reverence and self-sacrifice,” he added, in a voice which seemed to her full of a genuine solicitude for her future.
His attitude was full of mystery. The sudden interest which he—her father’s bitterest enemy—betrayed on her behalf was inexplicable.
“Well,” she faltered at last, “and if I really desire to break off my engagement with the count? What course do you suggest?”
“You must break your engagement, signorina,” he exclaimed quickly. “For several weeks I have desired to speak plainly and frankly to you, but I feared that certain distorted facts having perhaps come to your ears, you might treat me as your enemy rather than your friend. But to-night, finding you alone, I resolved to speak, and, if possible, to save you from sacrificing yourself to a man so unworthy of you.”
“But I always thought he was your friend!” she exclaimed in surprise, looking straight at the man before her and toying with her big feathered fan.
“We are friends. We have been guests together under your father’s roof in England, you will remember,” he admitted. “Yet I entertain too much respect for your father and his family to stand by and see you become the victim of such a man as Jules Dubard.”
“You are his friend, and yet you speak evil of him behind his back!” she remarked.
“No, I do not speak evil in the least. You misunderstand my motive. It is in the interests of your own well-being and future happiness. We must not allow that man to force you into an odious union. He is clever, but you must outwit him. Your duty to yourself is to do so.”
“But how can I?” she asked, with a desperation in her voice that came involuntarily, but which revealed to Borselli her eagerness to escape from the web which Dubard had weaved about her.
The future of that beautiful girl, the most admired of all that brilliant throng at court, was the future of Italy. Angelo Borselli knew it, and recognised what an important part that handsome daughter of the Minister was destined to play.