She gazed wildly at me--"correspondence!--what correspondence?"

"Have you not repeatedly received and replied to my letters?"

She clasped her hands with solemnity and fervor--"As I hope for mercy,
never!"

A horrible surmise shot through my brain--"Who told you I was dead?"

"It was reported that the ship in which you embarked for Naples
perished at sea."

"But who told you the report?"

She paused for an instant, and trembled--

"Filippo!"

"May the God of heaven curse him!" cried I, extending my clinched fists
aloft.

"Oh do not curse him--do not curse him!" exclaimed she--"He is--he is
--my husband!"

This was all that was wanting to unfold the perfidy that had been
practised upon me. My blood boiled like liquid fire in my veins. I
gasped with rage too great for utterance. I remained for a time
bewildered by the whirl of horrible thoughts that rushed through my
mind. The poor victim of deception before me thought it was with her I
was incensed. She faintly murmured forth her exculpation. I will not
dwell upon it. I saw in it more than she meant to reveal. I saw with a
glance how both of us had been betrayed. "'Tis well!" muttered I to
myself in smothered accents of concentrated fury. "He shall account to
me for this!"

Bianca overhead me. New terror flashed in her countenance. "For mercy's
sake do not meet him--say nothing of what has passed--for my sake say
nothing to him--I only shall be the sufferer!"

A new suspicion darted across my mind--"What!" exclaimed I--"do you
then _fear_ him--is he _unkind_ to you--tell me," reiterated I,
grasping her hand and looking her eagerly in the face--"tell
me--_dares_ he to use you harshly!"

"No! no! no!" cried she faltering and embarrassed; but the glance at
her face had told me volumes. I saw in her pallid and wasted features;
in the prompt terror and subdued agony of her eye a whole history of a
mind broken down by tyranny. Great God! and was this beauteous flower
snatched from me to be thus trampled upon? The idea roused me to
madness. I clinched my teeth and my hands; I foamed at the mouth; every
passion seemed to have resolved itself into the fury that like a lava
boiled within my heart. Bianca shrunk from me in speechless affright.
As I strode by the window my eye darted down the alley. Fatal moment! I
beheld Filippo at a distance! My brain was in a delirium--I sprang from
the pavilion, and was before him with the quickness of lightning. He
saw me as