But twenty-three is a rather mature age for an Italian noble
lady to reach unmarried. That such should have been the case with
the Signora Violante was by no means because no suitor for her hand
had ever presented himself. Several such aspirants had entered the
lists. For the Contessa Violante was the great-niece of her great
uncle. But some of these had appeared objectionable to the Cardinal
and his sister;--who also were not at all likely to forget all that
was due to the prospects arising from such a relationship, and all
that it implied; and all of them had been objectionable to the young
Contessa herself.
Violante's expectations, indeed, in that line, or in any other of
all the different ways in which happiness may come to mortals in
this world, was very small. For the first nine years of her life she
had lived the only companion of a very miserable mother. And all
that mother's misery had apparently come from the fact of her having
a husband. Those first years of the child's life had been very sad;
very monotonous, very depressing. Perhaps the effect of them did but
confirm the speciality of an idiosyncrasy, which would have been
much the same without them. But, at all events, when the child was
brought to the house of her great-aunt, it seemed as if her mind and
character had been too long and too uniformly toned to accord with
sadness, for happiness to have any power of taking hold of her.
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