“You might have seen not only my thoughts but me myself in the same box, Signora, if you could have continued your observations after the curtain was down.  The lady you saw there is one for whom I have the highest possible regard,” said Ludovico, with a very slight shade of hauteur quite foreign to his usual manner, in his tone.

It was very slightly marked, but not so slightly as to escape the notice of Bianca, who perfectly well understood it and the meaning of it.

“I dare say she well deserves it; she looks as if she did,” said the Diva, with a pensive air, and a dash of melancholy in her voice.  “I have often wondered,” she continued, after a moment’s pause, “whether you others, grand signori, ever ask yourselves, when you bestow such regards as you speak of on a poor artist—­I know who she is, merely an artist like myself—­what the result to the woman so loved is likely to be?”

“Signora!” cried Ludovico, provoked, exactly as Bianca had intended he should be, into saying what he would not otherwise have allowed to escape him, “permit me to assure you that, however pertinent such speculations may be in other cases, which have doubtless fallen under your observation, they are altogether the reverse of pertinent in the present instance.  The lady in question is, as you say, a poor artist; not, perhaps, as you were also kind enough to say, one quite of the same kind as yourself, neither so successful nor so celebrated”—­he hastened to add as he saw a sudden paleness come over the face of the singer, and an expression sudden and rapidly repressed and effaced, of such a concentration of wrath and hatred in her eyes, that momentary as it was, pulled him up short with something very much akin to a feeling resembling fear—­“an artist neither so successful nor so celebrated as the Signora Lalli, but, nevertheless, a lady whom it is the dearest wish of my heart to call my wife.”

“She is indeed, then, a most fortunate and happy woman,” said Bianca, who had perfectly recovered herself, with grave gentleness; “and I am sure that neither I nor any sister artist have any right to envy her her happiness.  Would it seem presumption in a poor comedian to express her earnest wish that you, too, Signor Ludovico, may find your happiness in such a marriage?”

“Nay, don’t speak in that tone!” said Ludovico, putting out his hand and taking hers, which she readily gave him.  “I accept your good wishes, Signora, most thankfully.  I do hope and think that I—­that we shall find happiness in our mutual choice.  But, pray observe, Signora, that our talk has led me into confiding a secret to you, that I have, as yet, told to no living soul, and that it is important to me it should be kept secret yet awhile longer.  I know I may trust you; may I not?”