t up in Anziana's closet for an object lesson. When she discovers
it, she refuses to be reconciled to her husband, and vows to spend an
hour a day weeping over Lorenzo's remains.

On the night of his marriage Montrano is torn from the arms of Iseria by
his cruel uncle and shipped to Ceylon. Shipwrecked, he becomes the slave
of a savage Incas, whose renegade Italian queen falls in love with him.
But neither her blandishments nor the terrible effects of her
displeasure can make him inconstant to Iseria. After suffering
incredible hardships, he returns to see Iseria once more before entering
a monastery, but she, loyal even to the semblance of the man, refuses to
allow him to leave her.

Stenoclea's doting parents refuse to let her wed Armuthi, a gentleman
beneath her in fortune, and he in hopes of removing the objection goes
on his travels. Her parents die, her brother is assassinated on his way
home to Venice, she becomes mistress of her fortune, and soon marries
her lover. Completely happy, she begins to make a shirt for Miramillia's
son, but before it is completed, a servant who had been wounded when her
brother was killed, returns and identifies Armuthi as the slayer.
Through Miramillia's influence the husband is pardoned, but Stenoclea
retires to a convent.

An adventuress named Maria boasts to Miramillia that she has attained
perfect felicity by entrapping the Marquis de Savilado into a marriage.
She too undertakes the shirt, but in a few days Miramillia hears that
the supposed Marquis has been exposed as an impostor and turned into the
street with his wife.

Violathia endures for a long time the cruelties of her jealous husband,
Count Berosi, but finally yields to the persistent kindness of her
lover, Charmillo. Just as he has succeeded in alienating his wife's
affections, Berosi experiences a change of heart. His conduct makes the
divorce impossible, and she is forced to remain the wife of a man she
loathes, and to dismiss Charmillo who has really gained her love.

Tellisinda, to avoid the reproach of barrenness, imposes an adopted boy
on her husband, but shortly afterward gives birth to a child. She is
forced to watch a spurious but amiable heir inherit the estate of her
own ill-natured son. (Cf. footnote 2 at end of this chapter.)

Even unmarried ladies, Miramillia finds, are not without their
discontents. Amalia is vexed over the failure of a ball gown. Clorilla
is outranked by an acquaintance whose fathe