Chapter XIV

WHAT COUNT ROSSI SAW IN THE OLD ORANGERY.

In the meantime the Countess, as I said before, had left the blue room in an unusually sad or perhaps rather _ennuyé_ state of mind, utterly dissatisfied with everything and everybody, and in great want of some new distraction.

Finding Carlo in the billiard-room, she motioned to him to come and take a walk with her. “And do amuse me with something, for I seem to be suddenly tired of the world and everything in it.”

“That’s because you have everything you wish for,” said he, as he walked on the old south terrace. “If you had to fight your way--if you were poor, and had to gamble or cheat for your bread, it would be different.”

“Yes, I know you hate being poor--you would marry an ugly heiress to-morrow if any were to be had; you care for nothing but riches.”

“I thought you too valued them, else why----”

“Why--what?” she inquired, with a look of surprise.

“Oh, never mind, you know very well there are rumours, and always will be.”

“That I induced the Count to propose to me; well, but that did not increase my riches so very much. You know this property in England is all my own.”

“Yes, but how did it become so?” he inquired, while he fixed his dark penetrating eyes full on hers.

She looked down, and her colour rose. “What can you mean?--and what can you know?”

“What many people in the south know right well. Don’t be frightened, Cunigunda,” he said, with a tender look. “I am not going to repeat it. For I can see you no longer care for Alphonso, and it must be almost punishment enough to have committed a crime, and then to find after all it was the wrong man you married--a man of too cold and unimpassioned a nature ever to appreciate you.”

“Ah, yes, that is true,” she said, with a provoked look. “Yet he did care for me at first. But all men are fickle--no one cares for one long.”

“Oh yes, they do,” he said. “Come, he will take you away soon, and we shall not have many more pleasant talks. Come into my favourite old orangery, and let us have a little peace. All these stiff English people are so fatiguing, and they stare so, whenever I say a word to you, that it is quite disagreeable. Come in here.”

They went and sat down on a bench among the orange-trees, while he passed his arm round her waist to support her as she leant back; and, unforbidden, raised her hand to his lips, which he kissed with tenderness.

“Stay, what is that?” asked Cunigunda, starting up. “I heard some sound up there,” pointing to the high window that looked down from the blue bed-room.

“Probably a bird among the creepers,” said he; “now don’t get frightened and imagine another ghost, for there are none by daylight, and nobody but ourselves ever comes into this tumble-down place.”

“I wish you would tell me openly what you alluded to just now,” she said, “about me, and--what is it you heard?”

“Ah, there are many particulars, known to some and suspected by more,” he said, “by everyone except your weak fool of a husband--that you----”

“Stop, not out loud--” she exclaimed, putting her hand on his mouth, as she burst into a passionate flood of tears.

“Oh, there, brute that I am, I have made you weep!” he said, throwing himself on his knees before her, and taking her hand.

“Who told you?” she rejoined, between her sobs. “Tell me that, and say nothing more.”

He whispered some words in her ear, which seemed to agitate her violently; and then after a pause, during which she wrung her hands as if in agony, she said,

“Well, come away now, for I hate this place; the very air seems full of” (“reproach” was the word in her mind, but in her utterance she hastily changed it into) “poison and misery.”