ver?" She believed in
him as she believed in God. She neither knew nor cared whither she was
drifting, so that it was with him! She was as one sailing with a fair
wind on an endless sea--a sea full of sunlight--sailing she knew
not where! Think no evil of her, I pray you. She was not wicked nor
deceitful--only ignorant, with such ignorance as made the angels fall.

As yet Nobili and Enrica had only met in such manner as has been told
by old Carlotta to her gossip Brigitta. Letters, glances, sighs,
had passed across the street, from palace to palace at the Venetian
casements--under the darkly-ivied archway of the Moorish garden--at
the cathedral in the gray evening light, or in the earliest glow of
summer mornings--and this, so seldom! Every time they had met Nobili
implored Enrica, passionately, to escape from the thralldom of her
life, implored her to become his wife. With his pleading eyes fixed
upon her, he asked her "why she should sacrifice him to the senseless
pride of her aunt? He whose whole life was hers?"

But Enrica shrank from compliance, with a secret sense that she had
no right to do what he asked; no right to marry without her aunt's
consent. Her love was her own to give. She had thought it all out
for herself, pacing up and down under the cool marble arcades of the
Moorish garden, the splash of the fountain in her ears--Teresa had
told her the same--her love was her own to give. What had her aunt
done for her, her sister's child, but feed and clothe her? Indeed,
as Teresa said, the marchesa had done but little else. Enrica was
as unconscious as Teresa of those marriage schemes of her aunt which
centred in herself. Had she known what was reserved for her, she would
better have understood the marchesa's nature; then she might have
acted differently. But heretofore there had been no question of her
marriage. Although she was seventeen, she had always been treated as a
mere child. She scarcely dared to speak in her aunt's presence, or to
address a question to her. Her love, then, she thought, was her own to
bestow; but more?--No, no even to Nobili. He urged, he entreated, he
reproached her, but in vain. He implored her to inform the marchesa
of their engagement. (Nobili could not offer to do this himself; the
marchesa would have refused to admit him within her door.) But Enrica
would not consent to do even this. She knew her aunt too well to trust
her with her secret. She knew that she was both subtle, and,