Meanwhile Giovanni had entered, and stood by Corona"s side near the fireplace. He saw at once that something was wrong, and he looked anxiously from the d.u.c.h.essa to Donna Tullia. Corona spoke at once.
"Donna Tullia," she said, quietly, "I have the honour to offer you an opportunity of explaining yourself."
Madame Mayer remained seated by the table, her face red with anger. She leaned back in her seat, and half closing her eyes with a disagreeable look of contempt, she addressed Giovanni.
"I am sorry to cause you such profound humiliation," she began, "but in the interest of the d.u.c.h.essa d"Astrardente I feel bound to speak. Don Giovanni, do you remember Aquila?"
"Certainly," he replied, coolly--"I have often been there. What of it?"
Old Saracinesca stared from one to the other.
"What is this comedy?" he asked of Corona. But she nodded to him to be silent.
"Then you doubtless remember Felice Baldi--poor Felice Baldi," continued Donna Tullia, still gazing scornfully up at Giovanni from where she sat.
"I never heard the name, that I can remember," answered Giovanni, as though trying to recall some memory of the past. He could not imagine what she was leading to, but he was willing to answer her questions.
"You do not remember that you were married to her at Aquila on the 19th of June--"
"I--married?" cried Giovanni, in blank astonishment.
"Signora d.u.c.h.essa," said the Prince, bending his heavy brows, "what is the meaning of all this?"
"I will tell you the meaning of it," said Donna Tullia, in low hissing tones, and rising suddenly to her feet she a.s.sumed a somewhat theatrical att.i.tude as she pointed to Giovanni. "I will tell what it means. It means that Don Giovanni Saracinesca was married in the church of San Bernardino, at Aquila, on the 19th of June 1863, to the woman Felice Baldi--who is his lawful wife to-day, and for aught we know the mother of his children, while he is here in Rome attempting to marry the d.u.c.h.essa d"Astrardente--can he deny it? Can he deny that his own signature is there, there in the office of the State Civile at Aquila, to testify against him? Can he--?"
"Silence!" roared the Prince. "Silence, woman, or by G.o.d in heaven I will stop your talking for ever!" He made a step towards her, and there was a murderous red light in his black eyes. But Giovanni sprang forward and seized his father by the wrist.
"You cannot silence me," screamed Donna Tullia. "I will be heard, and by all Rome. I will cry it upon the housetops to all the world--"
"Then you will precipitate your confinement in the asylum of Santo Spirito," said Giovanni, in cold, calm tones. "You are clearly mad."
"So I said," a.s.sented Corona, who was nevertheless pale, and trembling with excitement.
"Allow me to speak with her," said Giovanni, who, like most dangerous men, seemed to grow cold as others grew hot. Donna Tullia leaned upon the table, breathing hard between her closed teeth, her face scarlet.
"Madame," said Giovanni, advancing a step and confronting her, "you say that I am married, and that I am contemplating a monstrous crime. Upon what do you base your extraordinary a.s.sertions?"
"Upon attested copies of your marriage certificate, of the civil register where your handwriting has been seen and recognised. What more would you have?"
"It is monstrous!" cried the Prince, advancing again. "It is the most abominable lie ever concocted! My son married without my knowledge, and to a peasant! Absurd!"
But Giovanni waved his father back, and kept his place before Donna Tullia.
"I give you the alternative of producing instantly those proofs you refer to," he said, "and which you certainly cannot produce, or of waiting in this house until a competent physician has decided whether you are sufficiently sane to be allowed to go home alone."
Donna Tullia hesitated. She was in a terrible position, for Del Ferice had left Rome suddenly, and though the papers were somewhere in his house, she knew not where, nor how to get at them. It was impossible to imagine a situation more desperate, and she felt it as she looked round and saw the pale dark faces of the three resolute persons whose anger she had thus roused. She believed that Giovanni was capable of anything, but she was astonished at his extraordinary calmness. She hesitated for a moment.
"That is perfectly just," said Corona. "If you have proofs, you can produce them. If you have none, you are insane."
"I have them, and I will produce them before this hour to-morrow,"
answered Donna Tullia, not knowing how she should get the papers, but knowing that she was lost if she failed to obtain them.
"Why not to-day--at once?" asked Giovanni, with some scorn.
"It will take twenty-four hours to forge them," growled his father.
"You have no right to insult me so grossly," cried Donna Tullia. "But beware--I have you in my power. By this time to-morrow you shall see with your own eyes that I speak the truth. Let me go," she cried, as the old Prince placed himself between her and the door.
"I will," said he. "But before you go, I beg you to observe that if between now and the time you show us these doc.u.ments you breathe abroad one word of your accusations, I will have you arrested as a dangerous lunatic, and lodged in Santo Spirito; and if these papers are not authentic, you will be arrested to-morrow afternoon on a charge of forgery. You quite understand me?" He stood aside to let her pa.s.s. She laughed scornfully in his face, and went out.
When she was gone the three looked at each other, as though trying to comprehend what had happened. Indeed, it was beyond their comprehension.
Corona leaned against the chimneypiece, and her eyes rested lovingly upon Giovanni. No doubt had ever crossed her mind of his perfect honesty. Old Saracinesca looked from one to the other for a moment, and then, striking the palms of his hands together, turned and began to walk up and down the room.
"In the first place," said Giovanni, "at the time she mentions I was in Canada, upon a shooting expedition, with a party of Englishmen. It is easy to prove that, as they are all alive and well now, so far as I have heard. Donna Tullia is clearly out of her mind."
"The news of your engagement has driven her mad," said the old Prince, with a grim laugh. "It is a very interesting and romantic case."
Corona blushed a little, and her eyes sought Giovanni"s, but her face was very grave. It was a terrible thing to see a person she had known so long becoming insane, and for the sake of the man she herself so loved. And yet she had not a doubt of Donna Tullia"s madness. It was very sad.
"I wonder who could have put this idea into her head," said Giovanni, thoughtfully. "It does not look like a creation of her own brain. I wonder, too, what absurdities she will produce in the way of doc.u.ments.
Of course they must be forged."
"She will not bring them," returned his father, in a tone of certainty.
"We shall hear to-morrow that she is raving in the delirium of a brain-fever."
"Poor thing!" exclaimed Corona. "It is dreadful to think of it."
"It is dreadful to think that she should have caused you all this trouble and annoyance," said Giovanni, warmly. "You must have had a terrible scene with her before we came. What did she say?"
"Just what she said to you. Then she began to rail against you; and I sent for you, and told her that unless she could be silent I would lock her up alone until you arrived. So she sat down in that chair, and pretended to read. But it was an immense relief when you came!"
"You did not once believe what she said might possibly be true?" asked Giovanni, with a loving look.
"I? How could you ever think it!" exclaimed Corona. Then she laughed, and added, "But of course you knew that I would not."
"Indeed, yes," he answered. "It never entered my head."
"By-the-bye," said old Saracinesca, glancing at the d.u.c.h.essa"s black bonnet and gloved hands, "you must have been just ready to go out when she came--we must not keep you. I suppose that when she said she would bring her proofs to-morrow at this hour, she meant she would bring them here. Shall we come to-morrow then?"
"Yes--by all means," she answered. "Come to breakfast at one o"clock. I am alone, you know, for Sister Gabrielle has insisted upon going back to her community. But what does it matter now?"
"What does it matter?" echoed the Prince. "You are to be married so soon.
I really think we can do as we please." He generally did as he pleased.
The two men left her, and a few minutes later she descended the steps of the palace and entered her carriage, as though nothing had happened.
Six months had pa.s.sed since she had given her troth to Giovanni upon the tower of Saracinesca, and she knew that she loved him better now than then. Little had happened of interest in the interval of time, and the days had seemed long. But until after Christmas she had remained at Astrardente, busying herself constantly with the improvements she had already begun, and aided by the counsels of Giovanni. He had taken a cottage of hers in the lower part of her village, and had fitted it up with the few comforts he judged necessary. In this lodging he had generally spent half the week, going daily to the palace upon the hill and remaining for long hours in Corona"s society, studying her plans and visiting with her the works which grew beneath their joint direction. She had grown to know him as she had not known him before, and to understand more fully his manly character. He was a very resolute man, and very much in earnest when he chanced to be doing anything; but the strain of melancholy which he inherited from his mother made him often inclined to a sort of contemplative idleness, during which his mind seemed preoccupied with absorbing thoughts. Many people called his fits of silence an affectation, or part of his system for rendering himself interesting; but Corona soon saw how real was his abstraction, and she saw also that she alone was able to attract his attention and interest him when the fit was upon him. Slowly, by a gradual study of him, she learned what few had ever guessed, namely, that beneath the experienced man of the world, under his modest manner and his gentle ways, there lay a powerful mainspring of ambition, a mine of strength, which would one day exert itself and make itself felt upon his surroundings. He had developed slowly, feeding upon many experiences of the world in many countries, his quick Italian intelligence comprehending often more than it seemed to do, while the quiet dignity he got from his Spanish blood made him appear often very cold. But now and again, when under the influence of some large idea, his tongue was loosed in the charm of Corona"s presence, and he spoke to her, as he had never spoken to any one, of projects and plans which should make the world move. She did not always understand him wholly, but she knew that the man she loved was something more than the world at large believed him to be, and there was a thrill of pride in the thought which delighted her inmost soul. She, too, was ambitious, but her ambition was all for him. She felt that there was little room for common aspirations in his position or in her own. All that high birth, and wealth, and personal consideration could give, they both had abundantly, beyond their utmost wishes; anything they could desire beyond that must lie in a larger sphere of action than mere society, in the world of political power. She herself had had dreams, and entertained them still, of founding some great inst.i.tution of charity, of doing something for her poorer fellows. But she learned by degrees that Giovanni looked further than to such ordinary means of employing power, and that there was in him a great ambition to bring great forces to bear upon great questions for the accomplishment of great results. The six months of her engagement to him had not only strengthened her love for him, already deep and strong, but had implanted in her an unchanging determination to second him in all his life, to omit nothing in her power which could a.s.sist him in the career he should choose for himself, and which she regarded as the ultimate field for his extraordinary powers. It was strange that, while granting him everything else, people had never thought of calling him a man of remarkable intelligence. But no one knew him as Corona knew him; no one suspected that there was in him anything more than the traditional temper of the Saracinesca, with sufficient mind to make him as fair a representative of his race as his father was.
There was more than mere love and devotion in the complete security she felt when she saw him attacked by Donna Tullia; there was already the certainty that he was born to be above small things, and to create a sphere of his own in which he would move as other men could not.