r upon his taste for dangerous
amusements than upon such scandalous adventures as made up the lives of
many of his contemporaries. But to all matrimonial proposals he answered
that he was barely thirty years of age, that he had plenty of time before
him, that he had not yet seen the woman whom he would be willing to
marry, and that he intended to please himself.

The Duchessa d'Astrardente made her speech to her hostess and passed on,
still followed by the two men; but they now approached her, one on each
side, and endeavoured to engage her attention. Apparently she intended to
be impartial, for she sat down in the middle one of three chairs, and
motioned to her two companions to seat themselves also, which they
immediately did, whereby they became for the moment the two most
important men in the room.

Corona d'Astrardente was a very dark woman. In all the Southern land
there were no eyes so black as hers, no cheeks of such a warm dark-olive
tint, no tresses of such raven hue. But if she was not fair, she was very
beautiful; there was a delicacy in her regular features that artists said
was matchless; her mouth, not small, but generous and nobly cut, showed
perhaps more strength, more even determination, than most men like to see
in women's faces; but in the exquisitely moulded nostrils there lurked
much sensitiveness and the expression of much courage; and the level brow
and straight-cut nose were in their clearness as an earnest of the noble
thoughts that were within, and that so often spoke from the depths of her
splendid eyes. She was not a scornful beauty, though her face could
express scorn well enough. Where another woman would have shown disdain,
she needed but to look grave, and her silence did the rest. She wielded
magnificent weapons, and wielded them nobly, as she did all things. She
needed all her strength, too, for her position from the first was not
easy. She had few troubles, but they were great ones, and she bore
them bravely.

One may well ask why Corona del Carmine had married the old man who was
her husband--the broken-down and worn-out dandy of sixty, whose career
was so well known, and whose doings had been as scandalous as his ancient
name was famous in the history of his country. Her marriage was in itself
almost a tragedy. It matters little to know how it came about; she
accepted Astrardente with his dukedom, his great wealth, and his evil
past, on the day when she left the convent where she