romantic
correspondence fixed my attention: it ran thus:

"Why do you write so much of marriage to me, Guido mio? it seems to my
mind that all the joy of loving will be taken from us when once the
hard world knows of our passion. If you become my husband you will
assuredly cease to be my lover, and that would break my heart. Ah, my
best beloved! I desire you to be my lover always, as you were when
Fabio lived--why bring commonplace matrimony into the heaven of such a
passion as ours?"

I studied these words attentively. Of course I understood their drift.
She had tried to feel her way with the dead man. She had wanted to
marry me, and yet retain Guido for her lonely hours, as "her lover
always!" Such a pretty, ingenious plan it was! No thief, no murderer
ever laid more cunning schemes than she, but the law looks after
thieves and murderers. For such a woman as this, law says, "Divorce
her--that is your best remedy." Divorce her! Let the criminal go
scot-free! Others may do it that choose--I have different ideas of
justice!

Tying up the packet of letters again, with their sickening perfume and
their blood-stained edges, I drew out the last graciously worded
missive I had received from Nina. Of course I heard from her every
day--she was a most faithful correspondent! The same affectionate
expressions characterized her letters to me as those that had deluded
her dead lover--with this difference, that whereas she inveighed much
against the prosiness of marriage to Guido, to me she drew the much
touching pictures of her desolate condition: how lonely she had felt
since her "dear husband's" death, how rejoiced she was to think that
she was soon again to be a happy wife--the wife of one so noble, so
true, so devoted as I was! She had left the convent and was now at
home--when should she have the happiness of welcoming me, her best
beloved Cesare, back to Naples? She certainly deserved some credit for
artistic lying; I could not understand how she managed it so well.
Almost I admired her skill, as one sometimes admires a cool-headed
burglar, who has more skill, cunning, and pluck than his comrades. I
thought with triumph that though the wording of Ferrari's will enabled
her to secure all other letters she might have written to him, this one
little packet of documentary evidence was more than sufficient for MY
purposes. And I resolved to retain it in my own keeping till the time
came for me to use it against her.

And ho