hat belief she would have felt that she was
committing a mortal sin.

She went back to her interview that morning with Padre Filippo, and
thought over all she had said and all he had answered; how she had been
willing to admit the possibility of Giovanni's love, and how sternly the
confessor had ruled down the clause, and told her there should never
arise such a doubt in her mind; how she had scorned herself for being
capable of seeking love where there was none, and how she had sworn that
there should be no perhaps in the matter. It seemed very hard to do
right, but she would try to see where the right lay. In the first place,
she should burn the anonymous letter, and never condescend to think of
it; and she should also burn Giovanni's, because it would be an injustice
to him to keep it. She looked once more at the unsigned, ill-written
page, and, with a little scornful laugh, threw it from where she sat into
the fire with its envelope; then she took Giovanni's note, and would
have done the same, but her hand trembled, and the crumpled bit of paper
fell upon the hearth. She rose from her chair quickly, and took it up
again, kneeling before the fire, like some beautiful dark priestess of
old feeding the flames of a sacred altar. She smoothed the paper out once
more, and once more read the even characters, and looked long at the
signature, and back again to the writing.

"This lady, who, I confess, takes no interest whatever in me...."

"How could he say it!" she exclaimed aloud. "Oh, if I knew who she was!"
With an impatient movement she thrust the letter among the coals, and
watched the fire curl it and burn it, from white to brown and from brown
to black, till it was all gone. Then she rose to her feet and left the
room.

Her husband certainly did not guess that the Duchessa d'Astrardente had
spent so eventful a morning; and if any one had told him that his wife
had been through a dozen stages of emotion, he would have laughed, and
would have told his informant that Corona was not of the sort who
experience violent passions. That evening they went to the opera
together, and the old man was in an unusually cheerful humour. A new coat
had just arrived from Paris, and the padding had attained a higher degree
of scientific perfection than heretofore. Corona also looked more
beautiful than even her husband ever remembered to have seen her; she
wore a perfectly simple gown of black satin without the smallest relief
of c