In the paroxysm of his rage the feeble old man became almost strong; his grip tightened upon his wife's wrist, and he dragged her violently from her seat.

"Betrayed! And by you!" he cried again, shaking with pa.s.sion. "You whom I have loved! This is your grat.i.tude, your sanctified devotion, your cunning pretence at patience! All to hide your love for such a man as that! You hypocrite, you--"

By a sudden effort Corona shook off his grasp, and drew herself up to her full height in magnificent anger.

"You shall hear me," she said, in deep commanding tones. "I have deserved much, but I have not deserved this."

"Ha!" he hissed, standing back from her a step, "you can speak now--I have touched you! You have found words. It was time!"

Corona was as white as death, and her black eyes shone like coals of fire. Her words came slowly, every accent clear and strong with concentrated pa.s.sion.

"I have not betrayed you. I have spoken no word of love to any man alive, and you know that I speak the truth. If any one has said to me what should not be said, I have rebuked him to silence. You know, while you accuse me, that I have done my best to honour and love you; you know well that I would die by my own hand, your loyal and true wife, rather than let my lips utter one syllable of love for any other man."

Corona possessed a supreme power over her husband. She was so true a woman that the truth blazed visibly from her clear eyes; and what she said was nothing but the truth. She had doubted it herself for one dreadful moment; she knew it now beyond all doubting. In a moment the old man's wrath broke and vanished before the strong a.s.sertion of her perfect innocence. He turned pale under his paint, and his limbs trembled. He made a step forward, and fell upon his knees before her, and tried to take her hands.

"Oh, Corona, forgive me," he moaned--"forgive me! I so love you!"

Suddenly his grasp relaxed from her hands, and with a groan he fell forward against her knees.

"G.o.d knows I forgive you!" cried Corona, the tears starting to her eyes in sudden pity. She bent down to support him; but as she moved, he fell prostrate upon his face before her. With a cry of terror she kneeled beside him; with her strong arms she turned his body and raised his head upon her knees. His face was ghastly white, save where the tinges of paint made a hideous mockery of colour upon his livid skin. His parted lips were faintly purple, and his hollow eyes stared wide open at his wife's face, while the curled wig was thrust far back upon his bald and wrinkled forehead.

Corona supported his weight upon one knee, and took his nerveless hand in hers. An agony of terror seized her.

"Onofrio!" she cried--she rarely called him by his name--"Onofrio! speak to me! My husband!" She clasped him wildly in her arms. "O G.o.d, have mercy!"

Onofrio d'Astrardente was dead. The poor old dandy, in his paint and his wig and his padding, had died at his wife's feet, protesting his love for her to the last. The long averted blow had fallen. For years he had guarded himself against sudden emotions, for he was warned of the disease at his heart, and knew his danger; but his anger had killed him. He might have lived another hour while his rage lasted; but the revulsion of feeling, the sudden repentance for the violence he had done his wife, had sent the blood back to its source too quickly, and with his last cry of love upon his lips he was dead.

Corona had hardly ever seen death. She gently lowered the dead man's weight till he lay at full length upon the floor. Then she started to her feet, and drew back against the fireplace, and gazed at the body of her husband.

For fully five minutes she stood motionless, scarcely daring to draw breath, dazed and stupefied with horror, trying to realise what had happened. There he lay, her only friend, the companion of her life since she had known life; the man who in that very room, but two nights since, had spoken such kind words to her that her tears had flowed--the tears that would not flow now; the man who but a moment since was railing at her in a paroxysm of rage--whose anger had melted at her first word of defence, who had fallen at her feet to ask forgiveness, and to declare once more, for the last time, that he loved her! Her friend, her companion, her husband--had he heard her answer, that she forgave him freely? He could not be dead--it was impossible. A moment ago he had been speaking to her. She went forward again and kneeled beside him.

"Onofrio," she said very gently, "you are not dead--you heard me?"

She gazed down for a moment at the motionless features. Womanly thoughtful, she moved his head a little, and straightened the wig upon his poor forehead. Then, in an instant, she realised all, and with a wild cry of despair fell prostrate upon his body in an agony of pa.s.sionate weeping. How long she lay, she knew not. A knock at the door did not reach her ears, nor another and another, at short intervals; and then some one entered. It was the butler, who had come to announce the mid-day breakfast. He uttered an exclamation and started back, holding the handle of the door in his hand.

Corona raised herself slowly to her knees, gazing down once more upon the dead man's face. Then she lifted her streaming eyes and saw the servant.

"Your master is dead," she said, solemnly.

The man grew pale and trembled, hesitated, and then turned and fled down the hall without, after the manner of Italian servants, who fear death, and even the sight of it, as they fear nothing else in the world.

Corona rose to her feet and brushed the tears from her eyes. Then she turned and rang the bell. No one answered the summons for some time. The news had spread all over the house in an instant, and everything was disorganised. At last a woman came and stood timidly at the door. She was a lower servant, a simple strong creature from the mountains. Seeing the others terrified and paralysed, it had struck her common-sense that her mistress was alone. Corona understood.

"Help me to carry him," she said, quietly; and the peasant and the n.o.ble lady stooped and lifted the dead duke, and bore him to his chamber without a word, and laid him tenderly upon his bed.

"Send for the doctor," said Corona; "I will watch beside him."

"But, Excellency, are you not afraid?" asked the woman.

Corona's lip curled a little.

"I am not afraid," she answered. "Send at once." When the woman was gone, she sat down by the bedside and waited. Her tears were dry now, but she could not think. She waited motionless for an hour. Then the old physician entered softly, while a crowd of servants stood without, peering timidly through the open door. Corona crossed the room and quietly shut it. The physician stood by the bedside.

"It is simple enough, Signora d.u.c.h.essa," he said, gently. "He is quite dead. It was only the day before yesterday that I warned him that the heart disease was worse. Can you tell me how it happened?"

"Yes, exactly," answered Corona, in a low voice. She was calm enough now.

"He came into my room two hours ago, and suddenly, in conversation, he became very angry. Then his anger subsided in a moment, and he fell at my feet."

"It is just as I expected," answered the physician, quietly. "They always die in this way. I entreat you to be calm--to consider that all men are mortal--"

"I am calm now," interrupted Corona. "I am alone. Will you see that what is necessary is done quickly? I will leave you for a moment. There are people outside."

As she opened the door the gaping crowd of servants slunk out of her way.

With bent head she pa.s.sed between them, and went out into the great reception-rooms, and sat down alone in her grief.

It was genuine, of its kind. The poor man's soul might rest in peace, for she felt the real sorrow at his death which he had longed for, which he had perhaps scarcely dared to hope she would feel. Had it not been real, in those first moments some thought would have crossed her mind--some faint, repressed satisfaction at being free at last--free to marry Giovanni Saracinesca. But it was not so. She did not feel free--she felt alone, intensely alone. She longed for the familiar sound of his querulous voice--for the expression of his thousand little wants and interests; she remembered tenderly his harmless little vanities. She thought of his wig, and she wept. So true it is that what is most ridiculous in life is most sorrowfully pathetic in death. There was not one of the small things about him she did not recall with a pang of regret. It was all over now. His vanity was dead with him; his tender love for her was dead too. It was the only love she had known, until that other love--that dark and stirring pa.s.sion--had been roused in her. But that did not trouble her now. Perhaps the unconscious sense that henceforth she was free to love whom she pleased had suddenly made insignificant a feeling which had before borne in her mind the terrible name of crime. The struggle for loyalty was no more, but the memory of what she had borne for the dead man made him dearer than before. The follies of his life had been many, but many of them had been for her, and there was the true ring in his last words. "To be young for your sake, Corona--for your sake!" The phrase echoed again and again in her remembrance, and her silent tears flowed afresh. The follies of his life had been many, but to her he had been true. The very violence of his last moments, the tenderness of his pa.s.sionate appeal for forgiveness, spoke for the honesty of his heart, even though his heart had never been honest before.

She needed never to think again of pleasing him, of helping him, of foregoing for his sake any intimacy with the world which she might desire. But the thought brought no relief. He had become so much a part of her life that she could not conceive of living without him, and she would miss him at every turn. The new existence before her seemed dismal and empty beyond all expression. She wondered vaguely what she should do with her time. For one moment a strange longing came over her to return to the dear old convent, to lay aside for ever her coronet and state, and in a simple garb to do simple and good things to the honour of G.o.d.

She roused herself at last, and went to her own rooms, dragging her steps slowly as though weighed down by a heavy burden. She entered the room where he had died, and a cold shudder pa.s.sed over her. The afternoon sun was streaming through the window upon the writing table where yet lay the unfinished invitation she had been writing, and upon the plants and the rich ornaments, upon the heavy carpet--the very spot where he had breathed his last word of love and died at her feet.

Upon that spot Corona d'Astrardente knelt down reverently and prayed,--prayed that she might be forgiven for all her shortcomings to the dear dead man; that she might have strength to bear her sorrow and to honour his memory; above all, that his soul might rest in peace and find forgiveness, and that he might know that she had been truly innocent--she prayed for that too, for she had a dreadful doubt. But surely he knew all now: how she had striven to be loyal, and how truly--yes, how truly--she mourned his death.

At last she rose to her feet, and lingered still a moment, her hands clasped as they had been in her prayer. Glancing down, something glistened on the carpet. She stooped and picked it up. It was her husband's sealring, engraven with the ancient arms of the Astrardente.

She looked long at the jewel, and then put it upon her finger.

"G.o.d give me grace to honour his memory as he would have me honour it,"

she said, solemnly.

Truly, she had deserved the love the poor old dandy had so deeply felt for her.

CHAPTER XVII.

That night Giovanni insisted on going out. His wounds no longer pained him, he said; there was no danger whatever, and he was tired of staying at home. But he would dine with his father as usual. He loved his father's company, and when the two omitted to quarrel over trifles they were very congenial. To tell the truth, the differences between them arose generally from the petulant quickness of the Prince; for in his son his own irascible character was joined with the melancholy gravity which Giovanni inherited from his mother, and in virtue of which, being taciturn, he was sometimes thought long-suffering.

As usual, they sat opposite each other, and the ancient butler Pasquale served them. As the man deposited Giovanni's soup before him, he spoke. A certain liberty was always granted to Pasquale; Italian servants are members of the family, even in princely houses. Never a.s.suming that confidence implies familiarity, they enjoy the one without ever approaching the latter. Nevertheless it was very rarely that Pasquale spoke to his masters when they were at table.

"I beg your Excellencies' pardon--" he began, as he put down the soup-plate.

"Well, Pasquale?" asked old Saracinesca, looking sharply at the old servant from under his heavy brows.

"Have your Excellencies heard the news?"

"What news? No," returned the Prince.