“That is precisely what we must learn,” continued Trenta, eagerly seizing on the slightest abatement of the marchesa’s wrath.  “That is what we must ask her.  Marchesa, in common decency, you cannot put your own niece out of your house without seeing her and hearing her explanation.”

“You may call her, if you please,” answered the marchesa, with a look of dogged rage; “but I warn you, Cesare Trenta, if she avows her love for Nobili in my presence, I shall esteem that in itself the foulest crime she can commit.  If she avows it, she leaves my house to-night.  Let her die!—­I care not what becomes of her!”

CHAPTER VIII.

ENRICA’S TRIAL.

The Cavaliere Trenta, without an instant’s delay, seized the bell and rang it.  The broken-down retainer, in his suit of well-worn livery, shuffled in through the anteroom.

“What did the excellency command?” he asked in a dreary voice, as the marchesa did not address him.

“Tell the signorina that the Marchesa Guinigi desires her presence immediately,” answered the cavaliere, promptly.  He would not give her an opportunity of speaking.

“Her excellency shall be obeyed,” replied the servant, still addressing himself to the marchesa.  He bowed, then glided noiselessly from the room.

A door is heard to open, then to shut; a bell is rung; there is a muttered conversation in the anteroom, and the sound of receding footsteps; then a side-door in the corner of the sitting-room near the window opens; there is the slight rustle of a summer dress, and Enrica stands before them.

It is the same hour of sunset as when she had sat there three days before, knitting beside the open casement, with the twisted marble colonnettes and delicate tracery.  The same subtile fragrance of the magnolia rises upward from the waxy leaves of the tall flowering trees growing beneath in the Moorish garden.  The low rays of the setting sun flit upon her flaxen hair, defining each delicate curl, and sharply marking the outline of her slight girlish figure; the slender waist, the small hands.  Even the little foot is visible under the folds of her light dress.

Enrica’s face is in shadow, but, as she raises it and sees the cavaliere seated beside her aunt, a quiet smile plays about her mouth, and a gleam of pleasure rises in her eyes.

What is it that makes youth in Italy so fresh and beautiful—­so lithe, erect, and strong?  What gives that lustre to the eye, that ripple to the hair, that faultless mould to the features, that mellowness to the skin—­like the ruddy rind of the pomegranate—­those rounded limbs that move with sovereign ease—­that step, as of gods treading the earth?  Is it the color of the golden skies?  Is it a philter brewed by the burning sunshine? or is it found in the deep shadows that brood in the radiance of the starry night?  Is it in those sounds of music ever floating in the air? or in the solemn silence of the primeval chestnut-woods?  Does it come in the crackling of the mountain-storm—­in the terror of the earthquake?  Does it breathe from the azure seas that belt the classic land—­or in the rippling cadence of untrodden streams amid lonely mountains?  Whence comes it?—­how?—­where?  I cannot tell.