ns which it would
otherwise need years to reach. It sometimes happens that the nature in
which this unforeseen and abnormal development takes place is unable to
bear the precocious growth; then, losing sight of its identity in the
strange inward confusion of heart and mind which ensues, it is driven to
madness, and, breaking every barrier, either attains its object at a
single bound, or is shivered and ruined in dashing itself against the
impenetrable wall of complete impossibility. But again, in the last case,
when love is wholly unreturned, it dies a natural death of atrophy, when
it has existed in a person of common and average nature; or if the man or
woman so afflicted be proud and of noble instincts, the passion becomes a
kind of religion to the heart--sacred, and worthy to be guarded from the
eyes of the world; or, finally, again, where it finds vanity the dominant
characteristic of the being in whom it has grown, it draws a poisonous
life from the unhealthy soil on which it is fed, and the tender seed of
love shoots and puts forth evil leaves and blossoms, and grows to be a
most venomous tree, which is the tree of hatred.

Donna Tullia was certainly a woman who belonged to the latter class of
individuals. She had qualities which were perhaps good because not bad;
but the mainspring of her being was an inordinate vanity; and it was in
this characteristic that she was most deeply wounded, as she found
herself gradually abandoned by Giovanni Saracinesca. She had been in the
habit of thinking of him as a probable husband; the popular talk had
fostered the idea, and occasional hints, aad smiling questions concerning
him, had made her feel that he could not long hang back. She had been in
the habit of treating him familiarly; and he, tutored by his father to
the belief that she was the best match for him, and reluctantly yielding
to the force of circumstances, which seemed driving him into matrimony,
had suffered himself to be ordered about and made use of with an
indifference which, in Madame Mayer's eyes, had passed for consent. She
had watched with growing fear and jealousy his devotion to the
Astrardente, which all the world had noticed; and at last her anger had
broken out at the affront she had received at the Frangipani ball. But
even then she loved Giovanni in her own vain way. It was not till Corona
was suddenly left a widow, that Donna Tullia began to realise the
hopelessness of her position; and when she fou