She
had learned, further, that the Marchese Ludovico was his heir; that
the said Ludovico might be judged, by all those same signs and
tokens, to be very much such a man as might be likely to fall over
head and ears in love with a beautiful woman, who should make it her
business to cause him to do so; and yet further, that this Marchese
Ludovico was just the sort of man, whom, if she might permit herself
to join pleasure with business, she would very well like so to
operate on. She had heard a poem read to her by the Conte Leandro,
and had decided that, if he were the wealthiest man in all Ravenna,
no sense of her duty to herself could prevail to make her do
anything but run away from him at the first warning of his approach.
Nevertheless, from him, even, she had learned something. She had
become acquainted with the fact, whispered in his own exquisitely
felicitous manner, and with the tact and judicious appreciation of
opportunity peculiar to him, that Ludovico di Castelmare was, to the
great sorrow of his friends and family, enslaved by a certain
Venetian artist, then resident in Ravenna,--a girl really of no
attractions whatever.
Thus much of the carte du pays of that new country, in which her own
campaign was to be made, and of which it so much imported her to
have the social map, she had learned, when she found Quinto Lalli
waiting for her to take possession of their new home.
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