At the end of half an hour he excused himself upon the plea that he was still only convalescent, and was unable to bear the fatigue of late hours.  Donna Tullia did not press him to stay, for she wished to be alone; and when he was gone she sat long at the open piano, pondering upon what she had done, and even more upon what she had escaped doing.  It was a hideous thought that if Giovanni, in all that long winter, had asked her to be his wife, she would readily have consented; it was fearful to think what her position would have been towards Del Ferice, who would have been able by a mere word to annul her marriage by proving the previous one at Aquila.  People do not trifle with such accusations, and he certainly knew what he was doing; she would have been bound hand and foot.  Or supposing that Del Ferice had died of the wound he received in the duel, and his papers had been ransacked by his heirs, whoever they might be—­these attested documents would have become public property.  What a narrow escape Giovanni had had!  And she herself, too, how nearly had she been involved in his ruin!  She liked to think that he had almost offered himself to her; it flattered her, although she now hated him so cordially.  She could not help admiring Del Ferice’s wonderful discretion in so long concealing a piece of scandal that would have shaken Roman society to its foundations, and she trembled when she thought what would happen if she herself were ever tempted to reveal what she had heard.  Del Ferice was certainly a man of genius—­so quiet, and yet possessing such weapons; there was some generosity about him too, or he would have revenged himself for his wound by destroying Giovanni’s reputation.  She considered whether she could have kept her counsel so well in his place.  After all, as he had said, the moment for using the documents had not yet come, for hitherto Giovanni had never proposed to marry any one.  Perhaps this secret wedding in Aquila explained his celibacy; Del Ferice had perhaps misjudged him in saying that he was unscrupulous; he had perhaps left his peasant wife, repenting of his folly, but it was perhaps on her account that he had never proposed to marry Donna Tullia; he had, then, only been amusing himself with Corona.  That all seemed likely enough—­so likely, that it heightened the certainty of Del Ferice’s information.

A few days later, as Giovanni had intended, news began to reach Rome that he had been in Florence, and was actually in Paris; then it was said that he was going upon a shooting expedition somewhere in the far north during the summer.  It was like him, and in accordance with his tastes.  He hated the quiet receptions at the great houses during Lent, to which, if he remained in Rome, he was obliged to go.  He naturally escaped when he could.  But there was no escape for Donna Tullia, and after all she managed to extract some amusement from these gatherings.  She was the acknowledged centre of the more noisy set, and wherever