University of Virginia Library

4. IV.

While the Count Basil's revenge sped thus merrily, the just
Fates were preparing for him a retribution in his love. The
mortification of the Marchesa del Marmore, at the Cascine, had
been made the subject of conversation at the prima sera of the
Lady Geraldine; and, other details of the same secret drama
transpiring at the same time, the whole secret of Count Basil's
feelings toward that unfortunate woman flashed clearly and fully
upon her. His motives for pretending to have drawn the portrait
of the lagoon—for procuring her an admission to the exclusive
suppers of the Pitti—for a thousand things which had been unaccountable,
or referred to more amiable causes—were at once

unveiled. Even yet, with no suspicion of the extent of his
revenge, the Lady Geraldine felt an indignant pity for the unconscious
victim, and a surprised disapproval of the character
ummasked to her eye. Upon further reflection, her brow flushed
to remember that she herself had been made the most effective
tool of his revenge; and, as she recalled circumstance after circumstance
in the last month's history, the attention and preference
he had shown her, and which had gratified her, perhaps,
more than she admitted to herself, seemed to her sensitive and
resentful mind to have been only the cold instruments of jealousy.
Incapable as she was of an unlawful passion, the unequalled fascinations
of Count Basil had silently found their way to her heart,
and, if her indignation was kindled by a sense of justice and
womanly pity, it was fed and fanned unaware by mortified pride.
She rang, and sent an order to the gate that she was to be
denied for the future to Count Basil Spirifort.

The servant had appeared with his silver tray in his hand, and,
before leaving her presence to communicate the order, he presented
her with a letter. Well foreseeing the éclaircissement
which must follow the public scene in the Cascine, the Count
Basil had left the café for his own palazzo; and, in a letter, of
which the following is the passage most important to our story,
he revealed, to the lady he loved, a secret, which he hoped would
anticipate the common rumor:—

* * * * * “But these passionate words will have offended
your ear, dearest lady, and I must pass to a theme on which I
shall be less eloquent. You will hear to-night, perhaps, that
which, with all your imagination, will scarce prepare you for
what you will hear to-morrow. The Marchesa del Marmore is

the victim of a revenge which has only been second in my heart
to the love I have for the first time breathed to you. I can never
hope that you will either understand, or forgive, the bitterness in
which it springs; yet it is a demon to which I am delivered, soul
and body, and no spirit but my own can know its power. When
I have called it by its name, and told you of its exasperation, if
you do not pardon, you will pity me.

“You know that I am a Russian, and you know the station my
talents have won me; but you do not know that I was born a serf
and a slave! If you could rend open my heart and see the pool
of blackness and bitterness that lies in its bottom—fallen, drop
by drop, from this accursed remembrance—there would be little
need to explain to you how this woman has offended me. Had I
been honorably born, like yourself, I feel that I could have been,
like you, an angel of light; as it is, the contumely of a look has
stirred me to a revenge which has in it, I do not need to be
told, the darkest elements of murder.

“My early history is of no importance, yet I may tell you it
was such as to expose to every wind this lacerated nerve. In a
foreign land, and holding an official rank, it was seldom breathed
upon. I wore, mostly, a gay heart at Paris. In my late exile at
Venice I had time to brood upon my dark remembrance, and it
was revived and fed by the melancholy of my solitude. The obscurity
in which I lived, and the occasional comparison between
myself and some passing noble in the Piazza, served to remind me,
could I have forgotten it. I never dreamed of love in this humble
disguise, and so never felt the contempt that had most power
to wound me. On receiving the letters of my new appointment,
however, this cautious humility did not wait to be put off with my
sombrero. I started for Florence, clad in the habiliments of poverty,

but with the gay mood of a courtier beneath. The first
burst of my newly-released feelings was admiration for a woman
of singular beauty, who stood near me on one of the most love-awakening
and delicious eves that I ever remember. My heart
was overflowing, and she permitted me to breathe my passionate
adoration in her ear. The Marchesa del Marmore, but for the
scorn of the succeeding day, would, I think, have been the mistress
of my soul. Strangely enough, I had seen you without
loving you.

“I have told you, as a bagatelle that might amuse you, my
rencontre with del Marmore and his dame in the cathedral of
Bologna. The look she gave me, there, sealed her doom. It was
witnessed by the companions of my poverty, and the concentrated
resentment of years sprang up at the insult. Had it been a man,
I must have struck him dead where he stood: she was a woman,
and I swore the downfall of her pride.”

Thus briefly dismissing the chief topic of his letter, Count Basil
returned to the pleading of his love. It was dwelt on more eloquently
than his revenge; but as the Lady Geraldine scarce read
it to the end, it need not retard the procession of events in our
story. The fair Englishwoman sat down beneath the Etruscan
lamp, whose soft light illumined a brow cleared, as if by a sweep
from the wing of her good angel, of the troubled dream which
had overhung it, and, in brief and decided, but kind and warning
words, replied to the letter of Count Basil.