-and I resolved to do it. With a firm, quiet step I turned to
leave the avenue. I opened the little private wicket, and passed into
the dusty road. A clanging noise caused me to look up as I went by the
principal entrance of the Villa Romani. A man servant--my own
man-servant by the by--was barring the great gates for the night. I
listened as he slid the bolts into their places, and turned the key. I
remembered that those gates had been thoroughly fastened before, when I
came up the road from Naples--why then had they been opened since? To
let out a visitor? Of course! I smiled grimly at my wife's cunning! She
evidently knew what she was about. Appearances must be kept up--the
Signor Ferrari must be decorously shown out by a servant at the chief
entrance of the house. Naturally!--all very unsuspicious--looking and
quite in keeping with the proprieties! Guido had just left her then? I
walked steadily, without hurrying my pace, down the hill toward the
city, and on the way I overtook him. He was strolling lazily along,
smoking as usual, and he held a spray of stephanotis in his hand--well
I knew who had given it to him! I passed him--he glanced up carelessly,
his handsome face clearly visible in the bright moonlight--but there
was nothing about a common fisherman to attract his attention--his look
only rested upon me for a second and was withdrawn immediately. An
insane desire possessed me to turn upon him--to spring at his
throat--to wrestle with him and throw him in the dust at my feet--to
spit at him and trample upon him--but I repressed those fierce and
dangerous emotions. I had a better game to play--I had an exquisite
torture in store for him, compared to which a hand-to-hand fight was
mere vulgar fooling. Vengeance ought to ripen slowly in the strong heat
of intense wrath, till of itself it falls--hastily snatched before its
time it is like unmellowed fruit, sour and ungrateful to the palate. So
I let my dear friend--my wife's consoler--saunter on his heedless way
without interference--I passed, leaving him to indulge in amorous
musings to his false heart's content. I entered Naples, and found a
night's lodging at one of the usual resorts for men of my supposed
craft, and, strange to say, I slept soundly and dreamlessly. Recent
illness, fatigue, fear, and sorrow, all aided to throw me like an
exhausted child upon the quiet bosom of slumber, but perhaps the most
powerfully soothing opiate to my brain was the conscious