The carriages rolled on, and passed each other; and there rushed into the Marchese’s head a sudden pulse of blood, which turned his previous pallor into a dusky crimson, and seemed to make all the scene swim before his eyes.  Partly to hide the evidences of the emotion of which he was conscious, and partly because he felt as if he needed the support, he threw himself back into the corner of the carriage, turning himself away from the scene in front of it as though to shelter his face from the sun that was then so low in the sky as to begin to throw its slanting rays under the hoods of the carriages.  This position, as it chanced, brought the Marchese’s eye to bear on the little glass window made in the back of the hood of the carriage, after the old-fashioned manner of coach-building.

And what he saw through the little window was this.

A something—­a white paper packet, it looked like—­was in the act of being thrown to the Diva’s carriage from that immediately behind his own, in which, it will be remembered, were his nephew and the Conte Leandro; and the Goddess herself was leaning far out of her carriage in the act of throwing a bouquet to the Marchese Ludovico:  The Marchese Lamberto also saw the magnificent flowers he had himself just given to Bianca roll from her carriage on to the pavement,—­an accident caused by the movement of her person as she leaned forward to throw her flowers to the other carriage.

With what an added torment to the hell that raged within him the unfortunate Marchese returned from that miserable Corso to his palazzo, may be well imagined.

Nevertheless, there had been as little meaning in what he had seen as there often is in many things that make the madness of a jealous man’s jealousy.

With the white paper packet—­for such it in truth was—­the Marchese Ludovico had nothing whatever to do.  It had been thrown by the poet Leandro, and contained an attempt to improve the occasion after a fashion, such as he hoped must draw some reply from the Diva.  Bianca had taken the opportunity—­somewhat coquettishly, but according to the laws and customs of such occasions, quite permissibly—­to pay Ludovico the compliment in the eye of all Ravenna of throwing some flowers because she liked him, and because she chose to mark the fact that she threw none during all the Corso to anybody else.  She would have done the same if it had so happened that it had been in front of the Marchese Lamberto’s carriage instead of behind it; but, of course, to the passion-blinded brain of the latter, this circumstance made all the difference.

As to the rolling of his own superb bouquet on the pavement, it had been quite accidental, and much regretted by Bianca.  To recover anything of the kind on such an occasion is, it must be understood, quite out of the question.  Any such fallen treasure—­and half the things thrown do fall short of the hands for which they are meant—­ becomes the instant prey of the small boys who throng the streets, and are constantly on the look-out for such windfalls around the carriages.