Indeed Madame Mayer had not spent the summer and autumn in nursing her wrath against Corona.  She had travelled with the old Countess, her companion, and several times Ugo del Ferice had appeared suddenly at the watering-places which she had selected for her temporary residence.  From time to time he gave her news of mutual friends, which she repaid conscientiously with interesting accounts of the latest scandals.  They were a congenial pair, and Ugo felt that by his constant attention to her wishes, and by her never-varying willingness to accept his service, he had obtained a hold upon her intimacy which, in the ensuing winter, would give him a decided advantage over all competitors in the field.  She believed that she might have married half-a-dozen times, and that with her fortune she could easily have made a very brilliant match; she even thought that she could have married Valdarno, who was very good-natured:  but her attachment to Giovanni, and the expectations she had so long entertained in regard to him, had prevented her from showing any marked preference for others; and while she was hesitating, Del Ferice, by his superior skill, had succeeded in making himself indispensable to her—­a success the more remarkable that, in spite of his gifts and the curious popularity he enjoyed, he was by far the least desirable man of her acquaintance from the matrimonial point of view.

But when Donna Tullia again met Giovanni in the world, the remembrance of her wrongs revived her anger against him, and the news of his engagement to the Astrardente brought matters to a climax.  In the excitement of the moment, both her jealousy and her anger were illuminated by the light of a righteous wrath.  She knew, or thought she knew, that Don Giovanni was already married.  She had no proof that the peasant wife mentioned in the certificate was alive, but there was nothing either to show that she was dead.  Even in the latter ease it was a scandalous thing that he should marry again without informing Corona of the circumstances of his past life, and Donna Tullia felt an inner conviction that he had told the Duchessa nothing of the matter.  The latter was such a proud woman, that she would be horrified at the idea of uniting herself to a man who had been the husband of a peasant.

Madame Mayer remembered her solemn promise to Del Ferice, and feared to act without his consent.  An hour after she had heard the news of the engagement, she sent for him to come to her immediately.  To her astonishment and dismay, her servant brought back word that he had suddenly gone to Naples upon urgent business.  This news made her pause; but while the messenger had been gone to Del Ferice’s house, Donna Tullia had been anticipating and going over in her mind the scene which would ensue when she told Corona the secret.  Donna Tullia was a very sanguine woman, and the idea of at last being revenged for all the slights she had received worked suddenly upon her brain, so that as she paced her drawing-room in