“I hope you explained the connection of events,” said some one.

“Indeed I did.  It was delightful to witness his fury.  It was then that he dropped his eyeglass and turned as red as a boiled lobster.  He swore that his wife was above suspicion, as usual.”

“That is true,” said a young man who had attempted to make love to Corona during the previous year.

“Of course it is true,” echoed all the rest, with unanimity rare indeed where a woman’s reputation is concerned.

“Yes,” continued Valdarno, “of course.  But he goes so far as to say it is absurd that any one should admire his wife, who is nevertheless a most admirable woman.  He stamped, he screamed, he turned red in the face, and he went off without taking leave of me, flourishing his stick, and swearing eternal hatred and vengeance against the entire civilised society of the world.  He was delightfully amusing.  Will anybody play baccarat?  I will start a bank.”

The majority were for the game, and in a few minutes were seated at a large green table, drawing cards and betting with a good will, and interspersing their play with stray remarks on the events of the morning.

CHAPTER XVI.

Corona was fast coming to a state of mind in which a kind of passive expectation—­a sort of blind submission to fate—­was the chief feature.  She had shed tears when her husband spoke of his approaching end, because her gentle heart was grateful to him, and by its own sacrifices had grown used to his presence, and because she suddenly felt that she had comprehended the depth of his love for her, as she had never understood it before.  In the five years of married life she had spent with him, she had not allowed herself to think of his selfishness, of his small daily egotism; for, though it was at no great expense to himself, he had been uniformly generous and considerate to her.  But she had been conscious that if she should ever remove from her conscience the pressure of a self-imposed censorship, so that her judgment might speak boldly, the verdict of her heart would not have been so indulgent to her husband as was that formal opinion of him which she forced herself to hold.  Now, however, it seemed as though the best things she had desired to believe of him were true; and with the conviction that he was not only not selfish, but absolutely devoted to herself, there had come upon her a fear of desolation, a dread of being left alone—­of finding herself abandoned by this strange companion, the only person in the world with whom she had the habit of familiarity and the bond of a common past.  Astrardente had thought, and had told her too, that the knowledge of his impending death might lighten her burden—­might make the days of self-sacrifice that yet remained seem shorter; he had spoken kindly of her marrying again when he should be dead, deeming perhaps, in his sudden burst of generosity that she