used
to see their eyes--sparkling with light in the sunshine--grow liquid
and dreamy in the mellow radiance of the October moon, and turn upon me
with a vague wistfulness most lovely to behold, and--most admirably
feigned! I could lay my hand on a bare round white arm and not be
repulsed--I could hold little clinging fingers in my own as long as I
liked without giving offense such are some of the privileges of wealth!

In all the parties of pleasure I formed, and these were many--my wife
and Ferrari were included as a matter of course. At first Nina
demurred, with some plaintive excuse concerning her "recent terrible
bereavement," but I easily persuaded her out of this. I even told some
ladies I knew to visit her and add their entreaties to mine, as I said,
with the benignant air of an elderly man, that it was not good for one
so young to waste her time and injure her health by useless grieving.
She saw the force of this, I must admit, with admirable readiness, and
speedily yielded to the united invitations she received, though always
with a well-acted reluctance, and saying that she did so merely
"because the Count Oliva was such an old friend of the family and knew
my poor dear husband as a child."

On Ferrari I heaped all manner of benefits. Certain debts of his
contracted at play I paid privately to surprise him--his gratitude was
extreme. I humored him in many of his small extravagances--I played
with his follies as an angler plays the fish at the end of his line,
and I succeeded in winning his confidence. Not that I ever could
surprise him into a confession of his guilty amour--but he kept me well
informed as to what he was pleased to call "the progress of his
attachment," and supplied me with many small details which, while they
fired my blood and brain to wrath, steadied me more surely in my plan
of vengeance. Little did he dream in whom he was trusting!--little did
he know into whose hands he was playing! Sometimes a kind of awful
astonishment would come over me as I listened to his trivial talk, and
heard him make plans for a future that was never to be. He seemed so
certain of his happiness--so absolutely sure that nothing could or
would intervene to mar it. Traitor as he was he was unable to foresee
punishment--materialist to the heart's core, he had no knowledge of the
divine law of compensation. Now and then a dangerous impulse stirred
me--a desire to say to him point-blank:

"You are a condemned crimin