Donna Tullia’s fingers closed upon the large envelope with a grasping grip, as though she would never relinquish that for which she had paid so dear a price.  She had, indeed, at one time almost despaired of getting possession of them, and she had passed a terrible hour, besides having abased herself to the fruitless bribery she had practised upon Temistocle.  But she had gained her end, even at the expense of permitting Del Ferice to publish her engagement to marry him.  She felt that she could break it off if she decided at last that the union was too distasteful to her; but she foresaw that, from the point of worldly ambition, she would be no great loser by marrying a man of such cunning wit, who possessed such weapons against his enemies, and who, on the whole, as she believed, entirely sympathised with her view of life.  She recognised that her chances of making a great match were diminishing rapidly; she could not tell precisely why, but she felt, to her mortification, that she had not made a good use of her rich widowhood:  people did not respect her much, and as this touched her vanity, she was susceptible to their lack of deference.  She had done no harm, but she knew that every one thought her an irresponsible woman, and the thrifty Romans feared her extravagance, though some of them perhaps courted her fortune:  many had admired her, and had to some extent expressed their devotion, but no scion of all the great families had asked her to be his wife.  The nearest approach to a proposal had been the doubtful attention she had received from Giovanni Saracinesca during the time when his headstrong father had almost persuaded him to marry her, and she thought of her disappointed hopes with much bitterness.  To destroy Giovanni by the revelations she now proposed to make, to marry Del Ferice, and then to develop her position by means of the large fortune she had inherited from her first husband, seemed on the whole a wise plan.  Del Ferice’s title was not much, to be sure, but, on the other hand, he was intimate with every one she knew, and for a few thousand scudi she could buy some small estate with a good title attached to it.  She would then change her mode of life, and assume the pose of a social power, which as a young widow she could not do.  It was not so bad, after all, especially if she could celebrate the first day of her engagement by destroying the reputation of Giovanni Saracinesca, root and branch, and dealing a blow at Corona’s happiness from which it would not recover.

As for Del Ferice, he regarded his triumph as complete.  He cared little what became of Giovanni—­whether he was able to refute the evidence brought against him or not.  There had been nothing in the matter which was dishonest, and properly made out marriage-certificates are not easy things to annul.  Giovanni might swim or sink—­it was nothing to Ugo del Ferice, now that he had gained the great object of his life, and was at liberty to publish his engagement