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on the upper tier, was quite equally aware of the direction of the
Marchese Ludovico's thoughts and looks."
"You might have seen not only my thoughts but me myself in the same
box, Signora, if you could have continued your observations after
the curtain was down. The lady you saw there is one for whom I have
the highest possible regard," said Ludovico, with a very slight
shade of hauteur quite foreign to his usual manner, in his tone.
It was very slightly marked, but not so slightly as to escape the
notice of Bianca, who perfectly well understood it and the meaning
of it.
"I dare say she well deserves it; she looks as if she did," said the
Diva, with a pensive air, and a dash of melancholy in her voice. "I
have often wondered," she continued, after a moment's pause,
"whether you others, grand signori, ever ask yourselves, when you
bestow such regards as you speak of on a poor artist--I know who she
is, merely an artist like myself--what the result to the woman so
loved is likely to be?"
"Signora!" cried Ludovico, provoked, exactly as Bianca had intended
he should be, into saying what he would not otherwise have allowed
to escape him, "permit me to assure you that, however pertinent such
speculations may be in other cases, which have doubtless fallen
under your observation, they are altogether the reverse of pertinent
in the present instance.
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