Yes; I had done all I could for those who had never wronged me. I had acquitted myself of my debt to Vincenzo for his affection and fidelity; the rest of my way was clear. I had no more to do save the ONE THING, the one deed which had clamored so long for accomplishment. Revenge, like a beckoning ghost, had led me on step by step for many weary days and months, which to me had seemed cycles of suffering; but now it paused--it faced me--and turning its blood-red eyes upon my soul said, "Strike!"

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

The ball opened brilliantly. The rooms were magnificently decorated, and the soft l.u.s.ter of a thousand lamps shone on a scene of splendor almost befitting the court of a king. Some of the stateliest n.o.bles in all Italy were present, their b.r.e.a.s.t.s glittering with jeweled orders and ribbons of honor; some of the loveliest women to be seen anywhere in the world flitted across the polished floors, like poets' dreams of the gliding sylphs that haunt rivers and fountains by moonlight.

But fairest where all were fair, peerless in the exuberance of her triumphant vanity, and in the absolute faultlessness of her delicate charms, was my wife--the bride of the day, the heroine of the night.

Never had she looked so surpa.s.singly beautiful, and I, even I, felt my pulse beat quicker, and the blood course more hotly through my veins, as I beheld her, radiant, victorious, and smiling--a veritable queen of the fairies, as dainty as a drop of dew, as piercing to the eye as a flash of light. Her dress was some wonderful mingling of misty lace, with the sheen of satin and glimmering showers of pearl; diamonds glittered on her bodice like sunlight on white foam; the brigand's jewels flashed gloriously on her round white throat and in her tiny sh.e.l.l-like ears, while the ma.s.ses of her gold hair were coiled to the top of her small head and there caught by a priceless circlet of rose-brilliants--brilliants that I well remembered--they had belonged to my mother. Yet more l.u.s.trous than the light of the gems she wore was the deep, ardent glory of her eyes, dark as night and luminous as stars; more delicate than the filmy robes that draped her was the pure, pearl-like whiteness of her neck, which was just sufficiently displayed to be graceful without suggesting immodesty.

For Italian women do not uncover their bosoms for the casual inspection of strangers, as is the custom of their English and German sisters; they know well enough that any lady venturing to wear a decollete dress would find it impossible to obtain admittance to a court ball at the Palazzo Quirinale. She would be looked upon as one of a questionable cla.s.s, and no matter how high her rank and station, would run the risk of ejection from the doors, as on one occasion did unfortunately happen to an English peeress, who, ignorant of Italian customs, went to an evening reception in Rome arrayed in a very low bodice with straps instead of sleeves. Her remonstrances were vain; she was politely but firmly refused admittance, though told she might gain her point by changing her costume, which I believe she wisely did.

Some of the grandes dames present at the ball that night wore dresses the like of which are seldom or never seen out of Italy--robes sown with jewels, and thick with wondrous embroidery, such as have been handed down from generation to generation through hundreds of years. As an example of this, the d.u.c.h.ess of Marina's cloth of gold train, st.i.tched with small rubies and seed-pearls, had formerly belonged to the family of Lorenzo de Medici. Such garments as these, when they are part of the property of a great house, are worn only on particular occasions, perhaps once in a year; and then they are laid carefully by and sedulously protected from dust and moths and damp, receiving as much attention as the priceless pictures and books of a famous historical mansion. Nothing ever designed by any great modern tailor or milliner can hope to compete with the magnificent workmanship and durable material of the festa dresses that are locked preciously away in the old oaken coffers of the greatest Italian families--dresses that are beyond valuation, because of the romances and tragedies attached to them, and which, when worn, make all the costliest fripperies of to-day look flimsy and paltry beside them, like the attempts of a servant to dress as tastefully as her mistress.

Such glitter of gold and silver, such scintillations from the burning eyes of jewels, such cloud-like wreaths of floating laces, such subtle odors of rare and exquisite perfume, all things that most keenly p.r.i.c.k and stimulate the senses were round me in fullest force this night--this one dazzling, supreme and terrible night, that was destined to burn into my brain like a seal of scorching fire. Yes; till I die, that night will remain with me as though it were a breathing, sentient thing; and after death, who knows whether it may not uplift itself in some tangible, awful shape, and confront me with its flashing mock-l.u.s.ter, and the black heart of its true meaning in its menacing eyes, to take its drear place by the side of my abandoned soul through all eternity! I remember now how I shivered and started out of the bitter reverie into which I had fallen at the sound of my wife's low, laughing voice.

"You must dance, Cesare," she said, with a mischievous smile. "You are forgetting your duties. You should open the ball with me!"

I rose at once mechanically.

"What dance is it?" I asked, forcing a smile. "I fear you will find me but a clumsy partner."

She pouted.

"Oh, surely not! You are not going to disgrace me--you really must try and dance properly just this once. It will look so stupid if you make any mistake. The band was going to play a quadrille; I would not have it, and told them to strike up the Hungarian waltz instead. But I a.s.sure you I shall never forgive you if you waltz badly--nothing looks so awkward and absurd."

I made no answer, but placed my arm round her waist and stood ready to begin. I avoided looking at her as much as possible, for it was growing more and more difficult with each moment that pa.s.sed to hold the mastery over myself. I was consumed between hate and love. Yes, love!--of an evil kind, I own, and in which there was no shred of reverence--filled me with a sort of foolish fury, which mingled itself with another and manlier craving, namely, to proclaim her vileness then and there before all her t.i.tled and admiring friends, and to leave her shamed in the dust of scorn, despised and abandoned. Yet I knew well that were I to speak out--to declare my history and hers before that brilliant crowd--I should be accounted mad, and that for a woman such as she there existed no shame.

The swinging measure of the slow Hungarian waltz, that most witching of dances, danced perfectly only by those of the warm-blooded southern temperament, now commenced. It was played pianissimo, and stole through the room like the fluttering breath of a soft sea wind. I had always been an excellent waltzer, and my step had fitted in with that of Nina as harmoniously as the two notes of a perfect chord. She found it so on this occasion, and glanced up with a look of gratified surprise as I bore her lightly with languorous, dreamlike ease of movement through the glittering ranks of our guests, who watched us admiringly as we circled the room two or three times.

Then--all present followed our lead, and in a couple of minutes the ball-room was like a moving flower-garden in full bloom, rich with swaying colors and rainbow-like radiance; while the music, growing stronger, and swelling out in marked and even time, echoed forth like the sound of clear-toned bells broken through by the singing of birds.

My heart beat furiously, my brain reeled, my senses swam as I felt my wife's warm breath on my cheek; I clasped her waist more closely, I held her little gloved hand more firmly. She felt the double pressure, and, lifting her white eyelids fringed with those long dark lashes that gave such a sleepy witchery to her eyes, her lips parted in a little smile.

"At last you love me!" she whispered.

"At last, at last," I muttered, scarce knowing what I said. "Had I not loved you at first, bellissima, I should not have been to you what I am to-night."

A low ripple of laughter was her response.

"I knew it," she murmured again, half breathlessly, as I drew her with swifter and more voluptuous motion into the vortex of the dancers. "You tried to be cold, but I knew I could make you love me--yes, love me pa.s.sionately--and I was right." Then with an outburst of triumphant vanity she added, "I believe you would die for me!"

I bent over her more closely. My hot quick breath moved the feathery gold of her hair.

"I HAVE died for you," I said; "I have killed my old self for your sake."

Dancing still, encircled by my arms, and gliding along like a sea-nymph on moonlighted foam, she sighed restlessly.

"Tell me what you mean, amor mio," she asked, in the tenderest tone in the world.

Ah, G.o.d! that tender seductive cadence of her voice, how well I knew it!--how often had it lured away my strength, as the fabled siren's song had been wont to wreck the listening mariner.

"I mean that you have changed me, sweetest!" I whispered, in fierce, hurried accents. "I have seemed old--for you to-night I will be young again--for you my chilled slow blood shall again be hot and quick as lava--for you my long-buried past shall rise in all its pristine vigor; for you I will be a lover, such as perhaps no woman ever had or ever will have again!"

She heard, and nestled closer to me in the dance. My words pleased her.

Next to her worship of wealth her delight was to arouse the pa.s.sions of men. She was very panther-like in her nature--her first tendency was to devour, her next to gambol with any animal she met, though her sleek, swift playfulness might mean death. She was by no means exceptional in this; there are many women like her.

As the music of the waltz grew slower and slower, dropping down to a sweet and persuasive conclusion, I led my wife to her fauteuil, and resigned her to the care of a distinguished Roman prince who was her next partner. Then, un.o.bserved, I slipped out to make inquiries concerning Vincenzo. He had gone; one of the waiters at the hotel, a friend of his, had accompanied him and seen him into the train for Avellino. He had looked in at the ball-room before leaving, and had watched me stand up to dance with my wife, then "with tears in his eyes"--so said the vivacious little waiter who had just returned from the station--he had started without daring to wish me good-bye.

I heard this information of course with an apparent kindly indifference, but in my heart I felt a sudden vacancy, a drear, strange loneliness. With my faithful servant near me I had felt conscious of the presence of a friend, for friend he was in his own humble, un.o.btrusive fashion; but now I was alone--alone in a loneliness beyond all conceivable comparison--alone to do my work, without prevention or detection. I felt, as it were, isolated from humanity, set apart with my victim on some dim point of time, from which the rest of the world receded, where the searching eye of the Creator alone could behold me.

Only she and I and G.o.d--these three were all that existed for me in the universe; between these three must justice be fulfilled.

Musingly, with downcast eyes, I returned to the ball-room. At the door a young girl faced me--she was the only daughter of a great Neapolitan house. Dressed in pure white, as all such maidens are, with a crown of snow-drops on her dusky hair, and her dimpled face lighted with laughter, she looked the very embodiment of early spring. She addressed me somewhat timidly, yet with all a child's frankness.

"Is not this delightful? I feel as if I were in fairy-land! Do you know this is my first ball?"

I smiled wearily.

"Ay, truly? And you are happy?"

"Oh, happiness is not the word--it is ecstasy! How I wish it could last forever! And--is it not strange?--I did not know I was beautiful till to-night."

She said this with perfect simplicity, and a pleased smile radiated her fair features. I glanced at her with cold scrutiny.

"Ah! and some one has told you so."

She blushed and laughed a little consciously.

"Yes; the great Prince de Majano. And he is too n.o.ble to say what is not true, so I MUST be 'la piu bella donzella,' as he said, must I not?"

I touched the snow-drops that she wore in a white cl.u.s.ter at her breast.

"Look at your flowers, child," I said, earnestly. "See how they begin to droop in this heated air. The poor things! How glad they would feel could they again grow in the cool wet moss of the woodlands, waving their little bells to the wholesome, fresh wind! Would they revive now, think you, for your great Prince de Majano if he told them they were fair? So with your life and heart, little one--pa.s.s them through the scorching fire of flattery, and their purity must wither even as these fragile blossoms. And as for beauty--are you more beautiful than SHE?"

And I pointed slightly to my wife, who was at that moment courtesying to her partner in the stately formality of the first quadrille.

My young companion looked, and her clear eyes darkened enviously.

"Ah, no, no! But if I wore such lace and satin and pearls, and had such jewels, I might perhaps be more like her!"

I sighed bitterly. The poison had already entered this child's soul. I spoke brusquely.

"Pray that you may never be like her," I said, with somber sternness, and not heeding her look of astonishment. "You are young--you cannot yet have thrown off religion. Well, when you go home to-night, and kneel beside your little bed, made holy by the cross above it and your mother's blessing--pray--pray with all your strength that you may never resemble in the smallest degree that exquisite woman yonder! So may you be spared her fate."

I paused, for the girl's eyes were dilated in extreme wonder and fear.

I looked at her, and laughed abruptly and harshly.