actice
grew, the dower of the Paronsina dwindled in his fancy, till one day he
treated the whole question of their marriage with such coldness and
uncertainty in his talk with Tonelli, that the latter saw whither his
thoughts were drifting, and went home with an indignant heart to the
Paronsina, who joyfully sat down and wrote her first sincere letter to
the Doctor, dismissing him.

"It is finished," she said, "and I am glad. After all, perhaps, I don't
want to be any freer than I am; and while I have you, Tonelli, I don't
want a younger lover. Younger? Diana! You are in the flower of youth,
and I believe you will never wither. Did that rogue of a Doctor, then,
really give you the elixir of youth for writing him those letters? Tell
me, Tonelli, as a true friend, how long have you been forty-seven? Ever
since your fiftieth birthday? Listen! I have been more afraid of losing
you than my sweetest Doctor. I thought you would be so much in love with
lovemaking that you would go break-neck and court some one in earnest on
your own account!"

Thus the Paronsina made a jest of the loss she had sustained; but it was
not pleasant to her, except as it dissolved a tie which love had done
nothing to form. Her life seemed colder and vaguer after it, and the
hour very far away when the handsome officers of her king (all good
Venetians in those days called Victor Emanuel "our king") should come to
drive out the Austrians, and marry their victims. She scarcely enjoyed
the prodigious privilege, offered her at this time in consideration of
her bereavement, of going to the comedy, under Tonelli's protection and
along with Pennellini and his sister, while the poor signora afterwards
had real qualms of patriotism concerning the breach of public duty
involved in this distraction of her daughter. She hoped that no one had
recognized her at the theatre, otherwise they might have a warning from
the Venetian Committee. "Thou knowest," she said to the Paronsina, "that
they have even admonished the old Conte Tradonico, who loves the comedy
better than his soul, and who used to go every evening. Thy aunt told
me, and that the old rogue, when people ask him why he doesn't go to the
play, answers, 'My mistress won't let me.' But fie! I am saying what
young girls ought not to hear."

After the affair with the Doctor, I say, life refused to return exactly
to its old expression, and I suppose that, if what presently happened
was ever to happen, it cou