know far better than you which
are good and which are bad. But you call it devotion. And it was
devotion that kept you away from me when I was working, when I was
obliged to work--for it is my trade, after all--and when you might have
been with me day after day! And it was devotion to meet me with your
sour, severe look every day when I came home, as though I were a secret
enemy, a conspirator, a creature to be guarded against like a thief--as
though I had been staying away from you on purpose, and of my
will--instead of working for you all day long. That was your way of
showing your love. And to torment me with questions, everlastingly
believing that I spend my time in talking against you to Donna
Francesca--"

"You do!" cried Gloria, who had not been able to interrupt his
incoherent speech. "You love her as you never loved me--as you hate
me--as you both hate me!"

She grasped his sleeve in her anger, shaking his arm, and staring into
his eyes.

"You make me hate you!" he answered, trying to shake her off.

"And you succeed, between you--You and your--"

In his turn he grasped her arm with his long, thin fingers, with nervous
roughness.

"You shall not speak of her--"

"Shall not? It is the only right I have left--that and the right to hate
you--you and that infamous woman you love--yes--you and your
mistress--your pretty Francesca!" Her laugh was almost a scream.

His fury overflowed. After all, he was the son of a countryman, of the
steward of Gerano. He snatched the ivory fan from her hand and struck
her across the face with it. The fragile thing broke to shivers, and the
fragments fell between them.

Gloria turned deadly white, but there was a bright red bar across her
cheek. She looked at him a moment, and into her face there came that
fateful look that was like her dead mother's.

Then without a word she turned and left the room.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE daughter of Angus Dalrymple and Maria Braccio was not the woman to
bear a blow tamely, or to hesitate long as to the surest way of
resenting it. Before she had reached the door she had determined to
leave the house at once, and ten minutes had not passed before she found
herself walking down the Corso, veiled and muffled in a cloak, and
having all the money she could call her own, in her pocket, together
with a few jewels of little value, given her by her father.

Reanda had sunk into a chair when the door had closed behind her, half
stunned