’Oh, no, no, I cannot go from this house.  I will die here before your eyes.’

A sound of footsteps was heard.  It was easy to guess that those light steps were a woman’s.  Edoardo turned towards a table, as if to look for some papers, saying to himself:  ‘I am lost.’  And Sophia knelt down by the trunk that contained her clothes, pretending to rummage for something in it, while she wiped away her tears, and suppressed her sighs.

Edoardo’s bride entered.  She stood for a moment perplexed, seeing a woman with him; then said:  ’Edoardo, I sent for you that you might yourself choose one of these wreaths.  Which of them do you think will become me best?’ showing him at the same time two bridal wreaths which she held in her hand.

‘Neither,’ said Sophia, rising and presenting a third wreath to the bride.  ’The Signor Edoardo ordered me to make this some time ago for his bride, and I trust I have not laboured in vain.’

‘In truth it is much handsomer than either of these others,’ said the bride; ‘but you told me nothing of this, Edoardo?’

‘It was a surprise,’ added Sophia.

‘My own Edoardo,’ said the bride again; ’another kindness; a new expression of your love.  Oh, how dear this wreath will be to me!’ and she retired, taking it with her.

Sophia looked at the door through which the lady had disappeared, and bursting into tears, exclaimed:  ‘Oh my poor wreath!’

‘Sophia, Sophia, you are an angel,’ said Edoardo.  ’Once more I owe you my life.’

‘Since she is yours,’ replied Sophia mournfully, and sitting down faint and exhausted on her trunk—­’since she is yours, ought I to bring death to her mind, the death that I feel already in my poor heart?  No one knows, no one can know what is suffering, but those who suffer; oh, no woman ever endured what I endure at this moment!  Go—­go, Edoardo; prepare yourself for the ceremony:  they are waiting for you.  I have no more reproaches to make you—­no more right to make them.  All was in that wreath, and in renouncing that, I have renounced this.  Go—­I have need of not seeing you.  I promise you that when you return I will be no longer here to trouble you with my presence.’

Edoardo, pale, confused, penitent, bent a long last gaze on Sophia; then left the room, saying:  ‘I am a villain—­I am a villain.’

Two hours after, the marriage-ceremony was performed.  The gondolas that bore the bridal cortege, on their return from the church of St Moise, were met by some fishing-boats that had drawn up a drowned female.  The gondolas had to stop in order to let them pass.  ’A sad omen for the bride and bridegroom,’ said an old woman of the company.

Edoardo, who had recognised that pale corpse, had thrown himself at the bottom of his gondola, in order to conceal his emotion, and with a convulsive motion pressed the hand of his bride, which he held between his own.  The simple girl, interpreting that squeeze as an expression of love, said:  ‘Oh, my Edoardo, you will ever love me?’