Of course it was another!  What had she done, what word had she spoken, whereby the world might pretend to believe that she controlled this man’s actions?  “Fulfilling his engagements,” the letter said, too.  It must have been written by an ignorant person—­by some one who had no idea of what was passing, and who wrote at random, hoping to touch a sensitive chord, to do some harm, to inflict some pain, in petty vengeance for a fancied slight.  But in her heart, though she crushed down the instinct, she would have believed the anonymous jest well founded, for the sake of believing, too, that Giovanni Saracinesca was ready to lay his life at her feet—­although in that belief she would have felt that she was committing a mortal sin.

She went back to her interview that morning with Padre Filippo, and thought over all she had said and all he had answered; how she had been willing to admit the possibility of Giovanni’s love, and how sternly the confessor had ruled down the clause, and told her there should never arise such a doubt in her mind; how she had scorned herself for being capable of seeking love where there was none, and how she had sworn that there should be no perhaps in the matter.  It seemed very hard to do right, but she would try to see where the right lay.  In the first place, she should burn the anonymous letter, and never condescend to think of it; and she should also burn Giovanni’s, because it would be an injustice to him to keep it.  She looked once more at the unsigned, ill-written page, and, with a little scornful laugh, threw it from where she sat into the fire with its envelope; then she took Giovanni’s note, and would have done the same, but her hand trembled, and the crumpled bit of paper fell upon the hearth.  She rose from her chair quickly, and took it up again, kneeling before the fire, like some beautiful dark priestess of old feeding the flames of a sacred altar.  She smoothed the paper out once more, and once more read the even characters, and looked long at the signature, and back again to the writing.

“This lady, who, I confess, takes no interest whatever in me....”

“How could he say it!” she exclaimed aloud.  “Oh, if I knew who she was!” With an impatient movement she thrust the letter among the coals, and watched the fire curl it and burn it, from white to brown and from brown to black, till it was all gone.  Then she rose to her feet and left the room.

Her husband certainly did not guess that the Duchessa d’Astrardente had spent so eventful a morning; and if any one had told him that his wife had been through a dozen stages of emotion, he would have laughed, and would have told his informant that Corona was not of the sort who experience violent passions.  That evening they went to the opera together, and the old man was in an unusually cheerful humour.  A new coat had just arrived from Paris, and the padding had attained a higher degree of scientific perfection than heretofore.  Corona also looked more beautiful