Why had she done so? She spoke with perfect sincerity when she had
told him that she would do much and suffer much for his happiness.
And yet she had knowingly placed this thorn in his heart. Why could
she not let him, as Quinto Lalli had expressed it, have his Venetian
in peace? She spoke truly, moreover, when she said that, married to
the Marchese Lamberto, she fully purposed to make him a good and
true wife; truly, when she declared to old Lalli, and also to her
own heart, that she really did like and admire him much. And yet
there was something in the sight of the love of Ludovico and Paolina
that was bitter, odious, intolerable to her.
Ludovico hastened to the house in the Via di Santa Eufemia on
quitting that in the Via di Porta Sisi, not unhappy, not even
uneasy; with no recognized doubt, but with a germ of doubt in his
mind.
Signora Orsola had gone out per fare le spese, to make the
marketings for the day; and he found Paolina alone. Such a tete-a-
tete would have been altogether contrary to all rules in the more
strictly regulated circles of Italian society. And it would have
been all the more, and by no means the less contrary to rule in
consequence of the position in which Ludovico and Paolina stood
towards each other. But the world to which Paolina belonged lives
under a different code in these matters.
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