give
vent to her despair, a despair perhaps something less than her wrath,
for the voice of pride spoke louder within her than any other, and the
few tears which escaped her lids did not flow, but leaped and sparkled
like flames. Revenge, revenge! She longed for a revenge of blood, and
sometimes pictured one of her foresters, Bertoli or Salviato, going off
abroad to put a bullet into him on his wedding-day. Then she changed
her mind. No, she would deal the blow herself, and feel the joy of the
_vendetta_ in her own grasp. She envied the women of lower class who
wait behind a doorway for the traitor, and fling in his face a bottle
full of vitriol with a storm of hideous curses. Why did she not know
some of the horrible names that relieve the heart, some foul insult to
shriek at the mean treacherous companion who rose before her mind with
the hesitating look and false constrained smile he wore at their last
meeting? But even in her savage Corsican patois the great lady knew
no 'nasty words,' and when she had cried 'Coward! coward! wretch!' her
beautiful mouth could only writhe in helpless rage.

In the evening after her solitary dinner in the vast hall, whose
panelling of old leather was gilt by the setting sun, her wild pacing
to and fro began again. Now it was on the gallery overhanging the river,
quaintly restored by Paul Astier, with open arcades like lace-work and
two pretty corbel-turrets. Below on the Loire, outspread like a lake,
there still lingered a delicate silvery light from the departing day,
while the hazy evening air exaggerated the distances between the willow
beds and islands out towards Chaumont. But poor Mari' Anto did not look
at the view when, worn out with retracing the steps of her grief, she
leant both elbows on the balustrade and gazed into the dimness. Her life
appeared before her, waste and desolate, at an age when it is difficult
to make a fresh start. A faint sound of voices rose from Mousseaux, a
group of two or three small houses on the embankment; the chain of a
boat creaked as the night breeze rose. How easy it would be! Grief
had bowed down her head so low, that if she were but to lean forward
a little farther.... But then what would the world say? A woman of her
rank and age could not kill herself like any little grisette! The third
day Paul's note arrived, and with it the newspapers' detailed report of
the duel. It gave her the same delight as a warm pressure of the hand.
So some one