who had undertaken to criticise her, to
cast upon her so unjust an accusation. Moreover, she was very angry and
altogether thrown out of her usually calm humour. Her first impulse was
to go to her husband, and in the strength of her innocence to show him
the letter. Then she laughed bitterly as she thought how the selfish old
dandy would scoff at her sensitiveness, and how utterly incapable he
would be of discovering the offender or of punishing the offence. Then
again her face was grave, and she asked herself whether it was true that
she was innocent; whether she were not really to be blamed, if perhaps
she had really prevented Giovanni from marrying Donna Tullia.

But if that were true, she must herself be the woman he spoke of in his
letter. Any other woman would have suspected as much. Corona went to the
window, and for an instant there was a strange light of pleasure in her
face. Then she grew very thoughtful, and her whole mood changed. She
could not conceive it possible that Giovanni so loved her as to marry for
her sake. Besides, no one could ever have breathed a word of him in
connection with herself--until this abominable anonymous letter was
written.

The thought that she might, after all, be the "person very dear to him,"
the one who "took no interest whatever in him," had nevertheless crossed
her mind, and had given her for one moment a sense of wild and
indescribable pleasure. Then she remembered what she had felt before; how
angry, how utterly beside herself, she had been at the thought of another
woman being loved by him, and she suddenly understood that she was
jealous of her. The very thought revived in her the belief that it was
not she herself who was thus influencing the life of Giovanni
Saracinesca, but another, and she sat silent and pale.

Of course it was another! What had she done, what word had she spoken,
whereby the world might pretend to believe that she controlled this man's
actions? "Fulfilling his engagements," the letter said, too. It must have
been written by an ignorant person--by some one who had no idea of what
was passing, and who wrote at random, hoping to touch a sensitive chord,
to do some harm, to inflict some pain, in petty vengeance for a fancied
slight. But in her heart, though she crushed down the instinct, she
would have believed the anonymous jest well founded, for the sake of
believing, too, that Giovanni Saracinesca was ready to lay his life at
her feet--although in t