He
had delivered her from the Conte Leandro, and there had come into
her mind comparisons between the two men. He had been on her side in
that matter; they had wished the same thing, and had accomplished it
against a third person; there had been, as it were, a secret between
them on the subject; and hence had grown a bond of union. She had
advanced from liking to admiring. Thence to the consciousness that
she was admired. She had gone onwards through the usual phases of
surprising herself in the act of thinking of him at all sorts of
hours, and gradually discovering that he filled an immense portion
of her lonely life there in the strange city, till she came to the
stage of mingling the avowal "Gli voglio tanto bene" with her last
prayers to Mary Mother by her bedside at night, and meditating on
the words he had said and the looks be had looked, after she had
laid her head upon the pillow.
She had thus quietly walked onwards into the deep waters of a great
love, before any question had ever suggested itself to her as to
whither she was going, and whether there might not be danger of
perishing in those deep waters.
Now nothing is clearer or more undoubted by every good and well-
conditioned girl among ourselves, than the certainty that any man
who unmistakably seeks to win her love either means and hopes to
make her his wife, or is merely fooling her for his own abominably
selfish amusement, or is insulting her and endeavouring to injure
her in a manner that makes it at once her duty and her inclination
to spurn him from her with horror and loathing.
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