"I should not have spoken!" he said--"And yet, why not! You were my first friend!--you found me working in the fields, a peasant lad, untrained and sullen, burning up my soul with pa.s.sionate thoughts which, but for you, might never have blossomed into action,--you rescued me--you made me all I am! So why should I not confess to you at once that there is a woman I love!--yes, love with all my soul, though I have seen her but once!--and she is too far off, too fair and great for me: she does not know I love her--but I heard she had been murdered--that she was dead--"
"Angela Sovrani!" cried Aubrey.
Cyrillon bent his head as a devotee might at the shrine of a saint.
"Yes--Angela Sovrani!"
Aubrey looked at his handsome face glowing with enthusiasm, and saw the pa.s.sion, the tenderness, the devotion of a life flashing in his fine eyes.
"Love at first sight!" he said with a smile--"I believe it is the only true fire! A glance ought to be enough to express the recognition of one soul to its mate. Well! Angela Sovrani is a woman among ten thousand--the love of her alone is sufficient to make a man better and n.o.bler in every way--and if you can win her--"
"Ah, that is impossible! She is already affianced--"
Aubrey took his arm.
"Come with me, and I will tell you all I know," he said--"For there is much to say,--and when you have heard everything, you may not be altogether without hope."
They turned, and went towards the Corso, which they presently entered, and where numbers of pa.s.sers-by paused involuntarily to look at the two men who offered such a marked contrast to each other,--the one brown-haired and lithe, with dark, eager eyes,--the other with the slim well set up figure of an athlete, and the fair head of a Saxon king.
And of the many who so looked after them, none guessed that the one was destined in a few years" time to create a silent and bloodless French Revolution, which should give back to France her white lilies of faith and chivalry,--or that the other was the upholder of such a perfect form of Christianity as should soon command the following of thousands in all parts of the world.
And while they thus walked through the Roman crowd, the two women they severally loved were talking of them. In Angela"s sick-room, softly shaded from the light, with a cheery wood fire burning, Sylvie sat by her friend, telling her all she could think of that would interest her, and rouse her from the deep gravity of mood in which she nearly always found her. The weary days of pain and illness had given Angela a strange, new beauty,--her face, delicate and pale, seemed transfigured by the working of the soul within,--and her eyes, tired as they were and often heavy with tears, had a serenity in their depths which was not of earth, but all of Heaven. She was able now to move from her bed, and lie on a couch near the fire,--and her little white hands moved caressingly and with loving care among the bunches of beautiful flowers which Sylvie had laid on her coverlet,--daffodils, anemones, narcissi, violets, jonquils, and all the sweet-scented flowers of early spring which come to Rome in December from the blossoming fields of Sicily.
"How sweet they are!" she said with a half sigh,--"They almost make me in love with life again!"
Sylvie said nothing, but only kissed her.
"How good you are to me, dearest Sylvie!" she then said--"You deserve to be very happy!"
"Not half so much as you do!" responded Sylvie tenderly--"I am of no use at all to the world; and you are! The world would not miss me a bit, but it would not find an Angela Sovrani again in a hurry!"
Angela raised a cl.u.s.ter of narcissi and inhaled their fine and delicate perfume. There were tears in her eyes, but she hid them with a spray of the flowers.
"Ah, Sylvie, you think too well of me! To be famous is nothing. To be loved is everything!"
Sylvie looked at her earnestly.
"You are loved," she said.
"No, no!" she said--"No, I am not loved. I am hated! Hush, Sylvie!--do not say one word of what is in your mind, for I will not hear it!"
She spoke agitatedly, and her cheeks flushed a sudden feverish red.
Sylvie made haste to try and soothe her.
"My darling girl, I would not say anything to vex you for the world!
You must not excite yourself--"
"I am not excited," said Angela, putting her arms round her friend and drawing her fair head down till it was half hidden against her own bosom--"No--but I must speak--bear with me for a minute, dear! We all have our dreams, we women, and I have had mine! I dreamt there was such a beautiful thing in the world as a great, unselfish love,--I fancied that a woman, if gifted with a little power and ability above the rest of her s.e.x, could make the man she loved proud of her--not jealous!--I thought that a lover delighted in the attainments of his beloved--I thought there was nothing too high, too great, too glorious to attempt for the sake of proving oneself worthy to be loved! And now--I have found out the truth, Sylvie!--a bitter truth, but no doubt good for me to know,--that men will kill what they once caressed out of a mere grudge of the pa.s.sing breath called Fame! Thus, Love is not what I dreamed it; and I, who was so foolishly glad to think that I was loved, have wakened up to know that I am hated!--hated to the very extremity of hate, for a poor gift of brair and hand which I wish--I wish I had never had!"
Sylvie raised her head and gently put aside the weak trembling little hands that embraced her.
"Angela, Angela! You must not scorn the gifts of the G.o.ds! No, No!--you will not let me say anything--you forbid me to express my thoughts fully, and I know you are not well enough to hear me yet--but one day you WILL know!--you will hear,--you will even be thankful for all the sorrow you have pa.s.sed through,--and meanwhile, dear, dearest Angela, do not be ungrateful!"
She said the word boldly yet hesitatingly, bending over the couch tenderly, her eyes full of light, and a smile on her lips. And taking up a knot of daffodils she swept their cool blossoms softly across Angela"s burning forehead, murmuring--
"Do not be ungrateful!"
"Ungrateful--!" echoed Angela,--and she moved restlessly.
"Yes, darling! Do not say you wish you never had received the great gifts G.o.d has given you. Do not judge of things by Sorrow"s measurement only. I repeat--you ARE loved--though not perhaps where you most relied on love. Your father loves you--your uncle loves you--Manuel loves you . . ."
Angela interrupted her with a protesting gesture.
"Yes--I know," she murmured, "but--"
"But you think all this love is worthless, as compared with a love that was no love at all?" said Sylvie. "There! We will not speak about it any more just now,--you are not strong, and you see things in their darkest light. Shall I talk to you about Aubrey?"
"Ah! That is a subject you are never tired of!" said Angela with a faint smile. "Nor am I."
"Well, you ought to be," answered Sylvie gaily, "for I am too blindly, hopelessly in love to know when to stop! I see nothing else and know nothing else--it is Aubrey, Aubrey all the time. The air, the sunlight, the whole world, seem only an admirable exposition of Aubrey!"
"Then how would you feel if he did not love you any more?" asked Angela.
"But that is not possible!" said Sylvie. "Aubrey could not change. It is not in him. He is not like our poor friend Fontenelle."
"Ah! That love of yours was only fancy, Sylvie!"
"We all have our fancies!" answered the pretty Comtesse, looking very earnestly into Angela"s eyes. "We are not always sure that what we first call love is love. But I had much more than a fancy for the Marquis Fontenelle. If he had loved me--as I think he did at the last--I should certainly have married him. But during all the time I knew him he had a way of relegating all women to the same level--servants, actresses, ballet-dancers, and ladies alike,--he would never admit that there is as much difference between one woman and another as between one man and another. And this is a mistake many men make. Fontenelle wished to treat me as Miraudin would have treated his "leading lady";--he judged that quite sufficient for happiness. Now Aubrey treats me as his comrade,--his friend as well as his love, and that makes our confidence perfect. By the way, he spoke to me a great deal yesterday about the Abbe Vergniaud, and told me all he knew about his son Cyrillon."
"Ah, the poor Abbe!" said Angela. "They are angry with him still at the Vatican--angry now with his dead body! But "Gys Grandit" is not of the Catholic faith, so they can do nothing with him."
"No. He is what they call a "free-lance,"" said Sylvie. "And a wonderful personage he is! I You have seen him?"
A faint colour crept over Angela"s pale cheeks.
"Yes. Once. Just once, in Paris, on the day his father publicly acknowledged him. But I wrote to him long before I knew who he realty was."
"Angela! You wrote to him?"
"Yes. I admired the writings of Gys Grandit--I used to buy all his books as they came out, and study them. I wrote to him--as many people will write to a favourite author--not in my own name of course--to express my admiration, and he answered. And so we corresponded for about two years, not knowing each other"s ident.i.ty till that scene in Paris brought us together--"
"How VERY curious,--ve--ry!" said Sylvie, with a little mischievous smile. "And so you are quite friends?"
"I think so--I believe so--" answered Angela--"but since we met, he has ceased to write to me."
Sylvie made a mental note of that fact in her own mind, very much to the credit of "Gys Grandit," but said nothing further on the subject.
Time was hastening on, and she had to return to the Casa D"Angeli to receive Monsignor Gherardi.