was preparing for the finale of that
drama which he foresaw and enjoyed as an artist who loves his art. He
expected to leave before long, and without regret, the house and his
love. It would happen, he thought, in this way: Juana, after waiting for
him in vain for several nights, would risk her life, perhaps, in asking
Perez what had become of his guest; and Perez would reply, not aware of
the importance of his answer,--

"The Marquis de Montefiore is reconciled to his family, who consent to
receive his wife; he has gone to Italy to present her to them."

And Juana?--The marquis never asked himself what would become of Juana;
but he had studied her character, its nobility, candor, and strength,
and he knew he might be sure of her silence.

He obtained a mission from one of the generals. Three days later, on the
night preceding his intended departure, Montefiore, instead of returning
to his own room after dinner, contrived to enter unseen that of Juana,
to make that farewell night the longer. Juana, true Spaniard and true
Italian, was enchanted with such boldness; it argued ardor! For herself
she did not fear discovery. To find in the pure love of marriage the
excitements of intrigue, to hide her husband behind the curtains of her
bed, and say to her adopted father and mother, in case of detection: "I
am the Marquise de Montefiore!"--was to an ignorant and romantic young
girl, who for three years past had dreamed of love without dreaming of
its dangers, delightful. The door closed on this last evening upon her
folly, her happiness, like a veil, which it is useless here to raise.

It was nine o'clock; the merchant and his wife were reading their
evening prayers; suddenly the noise of a carriage drawn by several
horses resounded in the street; loud and hasty raps echoed from the
shop where the servant hurried to open the door, and into that venerable
salon rushed a woman, magnificently dressed in spite of the mud upon the
wheels of her travelling-carriage, which had just crossed Italy, France,
and Spain. It was, of course, the Marana,--the Marana who, in spite
of her thirty-six years, was still in all the glory of her ravishing
beauty; the Marana who, being at that time the mistress of a king, had
left Naples, the fetes, the skies of Naples, the climax of her life of
luxury, on hearing from her royal lover of the events in Spain and the
siege of Tarragona.

"Tarragona! I must get to Tarragona before the town is taken!