aid me then, yes or no? Aid me, and you shall indeed be free. The magician will release the fair spirit he has bound to his will. Aid me not, /ma chere/, and mark, I do not threaten—I do but warn—aid me not; grant that I become a beggar, and ask yourself what is to become of you,—still young, still beautiful, and still penniless? Nay, worse than penniless; you have done me the honour," and here the count, looking on the table, drew a letter from a portfolio emblazoned with his arms and coronet,—"you have done me the honour to consult me as to your debts."
"You will restore my fortune?" said the marchesa, irresolutely,—and averting her head from an odious schedule of figures.
"When my own, with your aid, is secured."
"But do you not overrate the value of my aid?"
"Possibly," said the count, with a caressing suavity—and he kissed his sister's forehead. "Possibly; but, by my honour, I wish to repair to you any wrong, real or supposed, I may have done you in past times. I wish to find again my own dear sister. I may over-value your aid, but not the affection from which it comes. Let us be friends, /cara Beatrice mia/," added the count, for the first time employing Italian words.
The marchesa laid her head on his shoulder, and her tears flowed softly. Evidently this man had great influence over her,—and evidently, whatever her cause for complaint, her affection for him was still sisterly and strong. A nature with fine flashes of generosity, spirit, honour, and passion was hers; but uncultured, unguided, spoilt by the worst social examples, easily led into wrong, not always aware where the wrong was, letting affections good or bad whisper away her conscience or blind her reason. Such women are often far more dangerous when induced to wrong than those who are thoroughly abandoned,—such women are the accomplices men like the Count of Peschiera most desire to obtain.
"Ah, Giulio," said Beatrice, after a pause, and looking up at him through her tears, "when you speak to me thus, you know you can do with me what you will. Fatherless and motherless, whom had my childhood to love and obey but you?"
"Dear Beatrice," murmured the count, tenderly, and he again kissed her forehead. "So," he continued, more carelessly,—"so the reconciliation is effected, and our interests and our hearts re-allied. Now, alas! to descend to business. You say that you know some one whom you believe to be acquainted with the lurking-place of my father-in-law—that is to be!"
"I think so. You remind me that I have an appointment with him this day: it is near the hour,—I must leave you."
"To learn the secret?—-Quick, quick. I have no fear of your success, if it is by his heart that you lead him!"
"You mistake; on his heart I have no hold. But he has a friend who loves me, and honourably, and whose cause he pleads. I think here that I have some means to control or persuade him. If not—ah, he is of a character that perplexes me in all but his worldly ambition; and how can we foreigners influence him through THAT?"
"Is he poor, or is he extravagant?"
"Not extravagant, and not positively poor, but dependent."
"Then we have him," said the count, composedly. "If his assistance be worth buying, we can bid high for it. /Sur mon ame/, I never yet knew money fail with any man who was both worldly and dependent. I put him and myself in your hands."
Thus saying, the count opened the door, and conducted his sister with formal politeness to her carriage. He then returned, reseated himself, and mused in silence. As he did so, the muscles of his countenance relaxed. The levity of the Frenchman fled from his visage, and in his eye, as it gazed abstractedly into space, there was that steady depth so remarkable in the old portraits of Florentine diplomatist or Venetian Oligarch. Thus seen, there was in that face, despite all its beauty, something that would have awed back even the fond gaze of love,— something hard, collected, inscrutable, remorseless. But this change of countenance did not last long. Evidently thought, though intense for the moment, was not habitual to the man; evidently he had lived the life which takes all things lightly,—so he rose with a look of fatigue, shook and stretched himself, as if to cast off, or grow out of, an unwelcome and irksome mood. An hour afterwards, the Count of Peschiera was charming all eyes, and pleasing all ears, in the saloon of a high-born beauty, whose acquaintance he had made at Vienna, and whose charms, according to that old and never-truth-speaking oracle, Polite Scandal, were now said to have attracted to London the brilliant foreigner.
CHAPTER III
The marehesa regained her house, which was in Curzon Street, and withdrew to her own room, to readjust her dress, and remove from her countenance all trace of the tears she had shed.
Half an hour afterwards she was seated in her drawing-room, composed and calm; nor, seeing her then, could you have guessed that she was capable of so much emotion and so much weakness. In that stately exterior, in that quiet attitude, in that elaborate and finished elegance which comes alike from the arts of the toilet and the conventional repose of rank, you could see but the woman of the world and the great lady.
A knock at the door was heard, and in a few moments there entered a visitor, with the easy familiarity of intimate acquaintance,—a young man, but with none of the bloom of youth. His hair, fine as a woman's, was thin and scanty, but it fell low over the forehead, and concealed that noblest of our human features. "A gentleman," says Apuleius, "ought to wear his whole mind on his forehead." The young visitor would never have committed so frank an imprudence. His cheek was pale, and in his step and his movements there was a languor that spoke of fatigued nerves or delicate health. But the light of the eye and the tone of the voice were those of a mental temperament controlling the bodily,—vigorous and energetic. For the rest, his general appearance was distinguished by a refinement alike intellectual and social. Once seen, you would not easily forget him; and the reader, no doubt, already recognizes Randal Leslie. His salutation, as I before said, was that of intimate familiarity; yet it was given and replied to with that unreserved openness which denotes the absence of a more tender sentiment.
Seating himself by the marchesa's side, Randal began first to converse on the fashionable topics and gossip of the day; but it was observable that while he extracted from her the current anecdote and scandal of the great world, neither anecdote nor scandal did he communicate in return. Randal Leslie had already learned the art not to commit himself, nor to have quoted against him one ill-natured remark upon the eminent. Nothing more injures the man who would rise beyond the fame of the salons than to be considered backbiter and gossip; "yet it is always useful," thought Randal Leslie, "to know the foibles, the small social and private springs, by which the great are moved. Critical occasions may arise in which such a knowledge may be power." And hence, perhaps (besides a more private motive, soon to be perceived), Randal did not consider his time thrown away in cultivating Madame di Negra's friendship. For, despite much that was whispered against her, she had succeeded in dispelling the coldness with which she had at first been received in the London circles. Her beauty, her grace, and her high birth had raised her into fashion, and the homage of men of the first station, while it perhaps injured her reputation as woman, added to her celebrity as fine lady. So much do we cold English, prudes though we be, forgive to the foreigner what we avenge on the native.
Sliding at last from these general topics into very well-bred and elegant personal compliment, and reciting various eulogies, which Lord this and the Duke of that had passed on the marchesa's charms, Randal laid his hand on hers, with the license of admitted friendship, and said,
"But since you have deigned to confide in me, since when (happily for me, and with a generosity of which no coquette could have been capable) you, in good time, repressed into friendship feelings that might else have ripened into those you are formed to inspire and disdain to return, you told me
