Such an idea would
have been too absurd! Yet his whole bearing was odd and ill at ease.
It had seemed to himself as if some subtle material influence
affected him, as he sat by her side,--as if a magnetic emanation
came forth from her that mounted to his brain, and disordered his
pulses, and the flow of his blood. He had sat by the side of women
as beautiful before now, and never been conscious of being affected
in any similar manner. What it was that produced such an effect upon
his nervous system,--what was the matter with him, he could not for
the life of him imagine. It was unpleasant; he did not like it at
all. And yet some irresistible stimulus and curiosity drove him to
prolong rather than to avoid the sorcery.
Bianca was by no means fully aware of the power and of the strength
of the sorcery which she was exercising on the Marchese. But she
understood a great deal more about it than he did. And when, in
making the appointment for him and the impresario to call on her at
one o'clock, he had asked her if that was too early for her habits,
and she had replied, that she was always afoot much earlier than
that, Bianca had felt persuaded that he would be at the door at an
earlier hour.
And her experience, or her instinct, with reference to such matters
had not deceived her.
The quarter-past twelve had not struck, when the Diva heard a knock
at the door of her apartment.
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