CHAPTER X.

When he was alone, Giovanni retraced his steps, and again took up his position near the entrance to the reception-rooms.  He had matter for reflection in the interview which had just ended; and, having nothing better to do while he waited for Corona, he thought about what had happened.  He was not altogether pleased at the interest his marriage excited in high quarters; he hated interference, and he regarded Cardinal Antonelli’s advice in such a matter as an interference of the most unwarrantable kind.  Neither he himself nor his father were men who sought counsel from without, for independence in action was with them a family tradition, as independence of thought was in their race a hereditary quality.  To think that if he, Giovanni Saracinesca, chose to marry any woman whatsoever, any one, no matter how exalted in station, should dare to express approval or disapproval was a shock to every inborn and cultivated prejudice in his nature.  He had nearly quarrelled with his own father for seeking to influence his matrimonial projects; it was not likely that he would suffer Cardinal Antonelli to interfere with them.  If Giovanni had really made up his mind—­had firmly determined to ask the hand of Donna Tullia—­it is more than probable that the statesman’s advice would not only have failed signally in preventing the match, but by the very opposition it would have aroused in Giovanni’s heart it would have had the effect of throwing him into the arms of a party which already desired his adhesion, and which, under his guidance, might have become as formidable as it was previously insignificant.  But the great Cardinal was probably well informed, and his words had not fallen upon a barren soil.  Giovanni had vacillated sadly in trying to come to a decision.  His first Quixotic impulse to marry Madame Mayer, in order to show the world that he cared nothing for Corona d’Astrardente, had proved itself absurd, even to his impetuous intelligence.  The growing antipathy he felt for Donna Tullia had made his marriage with her appear in the light of a disagreeable duty, and his rashness in confessing his love for Corona had so disturbed his previous conceptions that marriage no longer seemed a duty at all.  What had been but a few days before almost a fixed resolution, had dwindled till it seemed an impracticable and even a useless scheme.  When he had arrived at the Palazzo Frangipani that evening, he had very nearly forgotten Donna Tullia, and had quite determined that whatever his father might say he would not give the promised answer before Easter.  By the time the Cardinal had left him, he had decided that no power on earth should induce him to marry Madame Mayer.  He did not take the trouble of saying to himself that he would marry no one else.