University of Virginia Library

23. CHAPTER XXIII.

On Norman's return to his apartment, he had
directed a short note to Antonia, but received no
answer.

“Can it be possible,” he thought, “that the calumnies
of Alezzi have gained credit in her ear!”

The idea stung him, and opened afresh those
wounds in his heart which time and distance had
nearly healed. He lamented his acceptation of
Torrini's invitation to the palace. In the despondency
of the moment he derided as ridiculous the
hope of discovering any thing of Miss Romain,
which had been lately new-born in his breast. The
boy the Countess D—, the picture—he derided
his own infatuation which could detect encouragement
in trifles so light. Nearly seven years had
passed away, and here he found himself, as at first,
still marked with the awful and burning brand
upon his forehead; all men might read—all fingers
might point at it! Against the world's hate and
malice, what defence could he rear? Even should

he lay low in his heart's gore the bully Alezzi,
would that prove his innocence? would that gain
him esteem, respect? would it not rather invest his
name with new horror? would he not be yet more
a shunned being? His imagination looked forward
through the path of his future existence; what did
it discover?—gloom, everlasting gloom, and wo,
and ignominy—scorn, hatred, and solitude.

“Never again,” he said, as he paced his room
in the silence of midnight—“never again will I
trust myself within the pale of civilized society!
Never again will I fling off my mantle of dark and
terrible loneliness! I see, I see my lot is cast—
the doom is sealed. Fate has marked me. Hope
has left me. She whose image has still clung to
me—I will forget her—ay, utterly and for ever.
Parent, friends, home, country, my name, my language,
my very self—all shall be forgotten! Yet
do I not despair. No, I will mingle in more romantic
and brilliant climes. I will change my very
identity. Beings whom I have loved, scenes of
my boyhood, hopes long cherished—all that has
cheered and illumined my gone years—farewell!

“Antonia, too—light-hearted, exquisite creature!
How gentle, how confiding!—with her melting
voice, and yet more melting eyes. Fair, tender,
noble girl—could I but secure her happiness!”

A touch upon his shoulder caused him to start.
Sternly he turned. Heavens, what a sight met his
gaze! Antonia—her long black hair loose over her
shoulders, her face pale, her eyes streaming tears
—stood before him; one moment stood, and the
next flung herself at once, and with an utter abandonment
of all restraint, into his arms and upon his
bosom. A flood of tears choked her utterance.
Touched, alarmed, and with all the interest he
had ever felt for her—all his admiration suddenly

aroused—he strove, peradventure but feebly, to remove
the beautiful trembler. Those faint attempts
were unavailing, for, once yielding to the deep and
burning love which had long been hidden in her
breast, she clung to him with fervour which he
could neither explain nor resist.

“Again—again,” she said at length, passing her
arm around his shoulder, and looking up into his
face with streaming eyes; “speak those blessed
words again! Oh! you can—dear, dear Montfort,
you can! My happiness is in your gift—one kind
look, one word of tenderness, of love, and I am
steeped, steeped in bliss!”

“Antonia,” he said, “my sweet girl, sit—sit, dear
Antonia, you are wild, you are agitated, you know
not what you say.”

“Too well—too well!” she said again, still clinging
to his bosom, and utterly abandoned to her
feelings. “I say, dear Montfort, I love, I love—I
adore you; only, only you. Oh! I am beset with
dangers—with foul, black villains! And you—you,
too—but I will love you—I will fly with you.
What have I said!”

She covered her now encrimsoned cheeks with
her white hands, and the tears gushed through her
slender delicate fingers.

Leslie at once saw his situation; and it was one
which, whatever it might have been to other men,
presented to him only emotions of pain and embarrassment.
Yes, this ardent and passionate girl,
whom he had ever mistaken for a child, loved him
with all a woman's devotion and agony. Young
and light-hearted as she seemed, he had never
dreamed of this. He had forgotten that in Italy
love is everywhere; and that the rich blood which
flows in the veins of her women has been nursed
by voluptuous customs, and kissed for ages by a

burning sun, till it flashes to the heart of each individual
with hereditary fires.

“Antonia,” he said, as soon as her agitation had
in some measure subsided, “my dear, dear sister!”

“No sister! no sister!” she said, seizing his
hand and covering it with kisses—“cold, cold
Montfort!”

“Antonia,” cried Leslie, “sit, be calm—oblige
me, and hear me speak. Sweet girl, you say you
love me; you must not—I should be a villain did
I allow it. I am a friendless, blighted man—an
outcast—and persecuted by all.”

“And do you think, oh Montfort! for that cause
that I would love you less? No, no—more, a thousand
times more!”

“You must not, noble and generous girl; it is
wild madness; to-morrow I leave you, for ever.”

“Oh! no, no,” she said, shrinking again to his
bosom with the shuddering fondness of an affrighted
but affectionate child; “I know your story—I
know it from Alezzi, Montfort.”

“Do not call me Montfort. It is a name to hide
one execrable.”

“Stay,” said Antonia, with a calm look, “be you
seated. Alezzi has told me that your name was Leslie—Norman
Leslie—that you have been charged
with murder—that you escaped by an informality
in your trial—that you won the affections of a
beautiful American girl—that, having won them,
you wearied of them; and, fearful of discovery,
that your hand—this hand, Montfort, this very hand
—took her life, and threw her body into a stream.
Well, Montfort, I heard him through, as one hears
the wind whistle when beneath a shelter which it
cannot reach. I smiled, and in my smile were
scorn and incredulity, because I knew you, Montfort;
though my heart bled at every pore to hear

such blasphemous charges. They told me you
were in the habit of winning the affections of
women; and Alezzi denounced you for having attempted—as
he said—but too successfully, to gain
my own. Of that accusation I felt your innocence;
and, by instinct, I felt your innocence of
all. My love you have never sought. To me you
have been ever cold as ice. Yet, for that very
coldness, I love you. Woman's shame prompts
me to conceal this love. I cannot—it overwhelms
me. Did I not tell you my heart would burst, my
brain would madden, and the springs of my life
would snap asunder.”

“Antonia, your ardent feelings lead you away.”

“No, it is—it always will be my nature. Had
you ever wooed me, I might have loved you less.
Had you flung yourself at my feet, I never should
have been at yours; nay, I might have frowned and
called you presumptuous. It is your coldness which
has conquered me—your stern, unnatural coldness.
I love you as I have heard men may love a marble
statue; and the hopelessness of such a passion is
its fuel and its madness. I thought all men would
love me—must love me; all but you have. The
iron-hearted Alezzi, the very priest Ambrose—
princes, dukes—I have felt in the great world that
all—all were at my breath;—I could smile them
to my feet—I could frown them away; they were
my lovers—they were my slaves—all but you; on
your icy soul I have hung till I am spell-bound—
and, Montfort, you must be mine!”

Once more she flung herself into his arms, and
wept on his bosom.

Many ideas rolled through his mind. Through
his character there ran a vein of philosophical
thought and rapid observation, which rarely deserted
him, even in the most sudden emergency.

A vague sense crossed him of the vast advantages
which many men would find in the power to marry
this lovely and impassioned being. Wealth without
end was at his command, if wealth he needed;
and he might procure it without even the shadow
of deception, for she already knew his history, and
confided in his innocence. Perhaps, for a moment,
with her form in his arms—beautiful as she was,
almost beyond compare—the suggestion lingered
in his mind. Then the strange vicissitudes of life
struck upon his fancy—that he, who had for years
pined in solitude, a distant and timid lover, counting
the slightest glance of his mistress's eyes, the
most passing smile of her lip, as a stream of light
from the very gates of heaven—loving with all the
energy of his nature, yet loving in vain—and now,
in his turn, chance had raised him to the throne,
and, instead of being himself a trembling supplicant
for favour, lo, it was upon his breath that a beautiful,
devoted, high-born woman hung for happiness.
He was now the arbiter of her fate. His smile
had caught value—his look was light from heaven.
The recollection of his own misery as a slave, contrary
to the usual examples of history, was not ill
calculated to render him indulgent as a despot.
Who shall blame him if, scarcely knowing what he
did, he folded, with a gentle but half-trembling
sympathy, the lovely form in his arms—if he kissed
away the tears from that bright child's lids—if,
reckless or forgetful, when he knew that each
touch imparted pleasure, his hand put back the
ringlets from her temples, and laid itself, in a blessing,
upon her beautiful head?

“You love me, Montfort,” she said—“I know
you love me. I am alone in the world, surrounded
by dark and bitter enemies. But for you, I should
yield to their snares. Without your continued aid,

I shall yield to them yet. I have no firmness with
them. From my youth, they have been accustomed
to mould and govern my mind and feelings.
Love me, dear Montfort—love me and save me!
Alone, I am unable to cope with those around me.
Only you will save me. Say, dear Montfort, you
will be mine!”

She hid her face in his bosom

Desperate moment! Years had fled since he had
seen Flora Temple. The hope of beholding her
again was nearly extinct. Even if he beheld her,
he was uncertain of her affection. Never had Antonia
looked so lovely—never so confiding. He
had wooed Flora through doubt and suspense. He
had wooed in vain. But this impassioned creature
loved him in spite of reason, prudence, fear, and
suspicion—loved him till her guileless heart seemed
bursting with its load.

The weakness, however, was but momentary. It
was a baseness to suffer, even for an instant, the
warm and inexperienced heart, that beat so burstingly
against his own, to doubt his feelings and his
intentions. Yet Virginius, when his daughter lay
fainting in his arms, scarce paused with more tender
reluctance to strike the unnatural blow.

At length he said, with a sudden effort, and grasping
her small soft hand in his own, while still she
clung to him and looked in his face,—

“Antonia! hear me. I love, deeply, unchangeably,
I love—another.”

Not Ithuriel's spear wrought such a transformation.
In one moment, the gentle and fond girl
stood erect before him—fond—gentle—nay, a girl
no longer. It was a high, stern woman, whose
tearless eyes and pale calm face froze him with
haughty and majestic contempt.

“Antonia,” he said, bending like a subject before

an angry queen, “forgive me—I have never, never
dreamed of this.”

She replied not.

“You are offended?”

Yet she replied not.

“You hate?”

“Yes!” she exclaimed, with a single glance
from her flashing eyes.

“And thus we part—”

“For ever!”

“One word.”

“Away!”

With a gesture of speechless and indignant
scorn, she waved him back, and disappeared.