things?"

"I think it is enough to feel them," said Sister Gabrielle.

CHAPTER XXVI.

The summer season ripened into autumn, and autumn again turned to winter,
and Rome was once more full. The talk of society turned frequently upon
the probability of the match between the Duchessa d'Astrardente and
Giovanni Saracinesca; and when at last, three weeks before Lent, the
engagement was made known, there was a general murmur of approbation. It
seemed as though the momentous question of Corona's life, which had for
years agitated the gossips, were at last to be settled: every one had
been accustomed to regard her marriage with old Astrardente as a
temporary affair, seeing that he certainly could not live long, and
speculation in regard to her future had been nearly as common during his
lifetime as it was after his death. One of the duties most congenial
to society, and one which it never fails to perform conscientiously, is
that judicial astrology, whereby it forecasts the issue of its
neighbour's doings. Everybody's social horoscope must be cast by the
circle of five-o'clock-tea-drinking astro-sociologists, and, generally
speaking, their predictions are not far short of the truth, for society
knoweth its own bitterness, and is uncommonly quick in the diagnosis of
its own state of health.

When it was announced that Corona was to marry Giovanni after Easter,
society looked and saw that the arrangement was good. There was not one
dissenting voice heard in the universal applause. Corona had behaved with
exemplary decency during the year of her mourning--had lived a life of
religious retirement upon her estates in the sole company of a Sister of
Charity, had given no cause for scandal in any way. Everybody aspired
to like her--that is to say, to be noticed by her; but with one
exception, she had caused no jealousy nor ill-feeling by her
indifference, for no one had ever heard her say an unkind word concerning
anybody she knew. Donna Tullia had her own reasons for hating Corona, and
perhaps the world suspected them; but people did not connect the noisy
Donna Tullia, full of animal spirits and gay silly talk, with the idea of
serious hatred, much less with the execution of any scheme of revenge.

Indeed Madame Mayer had not spent the summer and autumn in nursing her
wrath against Corona. She had travelled with the old Countess, her
companion, and several times Ugo del Ferice had appeared suddenly at the
watering-places