She looked at me undecidedly, not quite knowing how to take me.
'May I offer you my arm,' I said as blandly as I could.
She smiled a little awkwardly and took it.
'How beautiful the Countess is to-night!' I said. 'Everyone will fall in love with her.' I knew she hated Caterina, a sentiment which the great lady returned with vigour. 'I would not dare say it to another; but I know you are never jealous: she is indeed like the moon among the stars.'
'The idea does not seem too new,' she said coldly.
'It is all the more comprehensible. I am thinking of writing a sonnet on the theme.'
'I imagined it had been done before; but the ladies of Forli will doubtless be grateful to you.'
She was getting cross; and I knew by experience that when she was cross she always wanted to cry.
'I am afraid you are angry with me,' I said.
'No, it is you who are angry with me,' she answered rather tearfully.
'I? Why should you think that?'
'You have not forgiven me for—'
I wondered whether the conscientious Giorgio had had another attack of morality and ridden off into the country.
'My dear lady,' I said, with a little laugh, 'I assure you that I have forgiven you entirely. After all, it was not such a very serious matter.'
'No?' She looked at me with a little surprise.
I shrugged my shoulders.
'You were quite right in what you did. Those things have to finish some time or other, and it really does not so much matter when.'
'I was afraid I had hurt you,' she said in a low voice.
The scene came to my mind; the dimly-lit room, the delicate form lying on the couch, cold and indifferent, while I was given over to an agony of despair. I remembered the glitter of the jewelled ring against the white hand. I would have no mercy.
'My dear Giulia—you will allow me to call you Giulia?'
She nodded.
'My dear Giulia, I was a little unhappy at first, I acknowledge, but one gets over those things so quickly—a bottle of wine, and a good sleep: they are like bleeding to a fever.'
'You were unhappy?'
'Naturally; one is always rather put out when one is dismissed. One would prefer to have done the breaking oneself.'
'It was a matter of pride?'
'I am afraid I must confess to it.'
'I did not think so at the time.'
I laughed.
'Oh, that is my excited way of putting things. I frightened you; but it did not really mean anything.'
She did not answer. After a while I said,—
'You know, when one is young one should make the most of one's time. Fidelity is a stupid virtue, unphilosophical and extremely unfashionable.'
'What do you mean?'
'Simply this; you did not particularly love me, and I did not particularly love you.'
'Oh!'
'We had a passing fancy for one another, and that satisfied there was nothing more to keep us together. We should have been very foolish not to break the chain; if you had not done so, I should have. With your woman's intuition, you saw that and forestalled me!'
Again she did not answer.
'Of course, if you had been in love with me, or I with you, it would have been different. But as it was—'
'I see my cousin Violante in the corner there; will you lead me to her?'
I did as she asked, and as she was bowing me my dismissal I said,—
'We have had a very pleasant talk, and we are quite good friends, are we not?'
'Quite!' she said.
I drew a long breath as I left her. I hoped I had hurt; I hoped I had humiliated her. I wished I could have thought of things to say that would have cut her to the heart. I was quite indifferent to her, but when I remembered—I hated her.
I knew everyone in Forli by now, and as I turned away from Giulia I had no lack of friends with whom to talk. The rooms became more crowded every moment. The assembly was the most brilliant that Forli had ever seen; and as the evening wore on the people became more animated; a babel of talk drowned the music, and the chief topic of conversation was the wonderful beauty of Caterina. She was bubbling over with high spirits; no one knew what had happened to make her so joyful, for of late she had suffered a little from the unpopularity of her husband, and a sullen look of anger had replaced the old smiles and graces. But to-night she was herself again. Men were standing round talking to her, and one heard a shout of laughter from them as every now and then she made some witty repartee; and her conversation gained another charm from a sort of soldierly bluntness which people remembered in Francesco Sforza, and which she had inherited. People also spoke of the cordiality of Girolamo towards our Checco; he walked up and down the room with him, arm in arm, talking affectionately; it reminded the onlookers of the time when they had been as brothers together. Caterina occasionally gave them a glance and a little smile of approval; she was evidently well pleased with the reconciliation.
I was making my way through the crowd, watching the various people, giving a word here and there or a nod, and I thought that life was really a very amusing thing. I felt mightily pleased with myself, and I wondered where my good friend Claudia was; I must go and pay her my respects.
'Filippo!'
I turned and saw Scipione Moratini standing by his sister, with a number of gentlemen and ladies, most of them known to me.
'Why are you smiling so contentedly?' he said. 'You look as if you had lost a pebble and found a diamond in its place.'
'Perhaps I have; who knows?'
At that moment I saw Ercole Piacentini enter the room with his wife; I wondered why they were so late. Claudia was at once seized upon by one of her admirers, and, leaving her husband, sauntered off on the proffered arm. Ercole came up the room on his way to the Count. His grim visage was contorted into an expression of amiability, which sat on him with an ill grace.
'This is indeed a day of rejoicing,' I said; 'even the wicked ogre is trying to look pleasant.'
Giulia gave a little silvery laugh. I thought it forced.
'You have a forgiving spirit, dear friend,' she said, accenting the last word in recollection of what I had said to her. 'A truly Christian disposition!'
'Why?' I asked, smiling.
'I admire the way in which you have forgiven Ercole for the insults he has
