Although Maddalena Lomi had not been his first love, and although he had married her under circumstances which are generally and rightly considered to afford few chances of lasting happiness in wedded life, still they had lived together through the one year of their union tranquilly, if not fondly.  She had molded herself wisely to his peculiar humors, had made the most of his easy disposition; and, when her quick temper had got the better of her, had seldom hesitated in her cooler moments to acknowledge that she had been wrong.  She had been extravagant, it is true, and had irritated him by fits of unreasonable jealousy; but these were faults not to be thought of now.  He could only remember that she was the mother of his child, and that she lay ill but two rooms away from him—­dangerously ill, as the doctors had unwillingly confessed on that very day.

The darkness was closing in upon him, and he took up the handbell to ring for lights.  When the servant entered there was genuine sorrow in his face, genuine anxiety in his voice, as he inquired for news from the sick-room.  The man only answered that his mistress was still asleep, and then withdrew, after first leaving a sealed letter on the table by his master’s side.  Fabio summoned him back into the room, and asked when the letter had arrived.  He replied that it had been delivered at the palace two days since, and that he had observed it lying unopened on a desk in his master’s study.

Left alone again, Fabio remembered that the letter had arrived at a time when the first dangerous symptoms of his wife’s illness had declared themselves, and that he had thrown it aside, after observing the address to be in a handwriting unknown to him.  In his present state of suspense, any occupation was better than sitting idle.  So he took up the letter with a sigh, broke the seal, and turned inquiringly to the name signed at the end.

It was “NANINA.”

He started, and changed color.  “A letter from her,” he whispered to himself.  “Why does it come at such a time as this?”

His face grew paler, and the letter trembled in his fingers.  Those superstitious feelings which he had ascribed to the nursery influences of his childhood, when Father Rocco charged him with them in the studio, seemed to be overcoming him now.  He hesitated, and listened anxiously in the direction of his wife’s room, before reading the letter.  Was its arrival ominous of good or evil?  That was the thought in his heart as he drew the lamp near to him, and looked at the first lines.

“Am I wrong in writing to you?” (the letter began abruptly).  “If I am, you have but to throw this little leaf of paper into the fire, and to think no more of it after it is burned up and gone.  I can never reproach you for treating my letter in that way; for we are never likely to meet again.