m gone from you forever. You have
betrayed me--how much I do not care to know. Perhaps I think you less
guilty than you are. Of all women, my heart clung to you. I loved you
as men only love once in their lives. For the sake of that love, I
will still screen you all I can. But it is known in Lucca that Count
Marescotti was your accepted lover when you promised yourself to me.
Also, that Count Marescotti refused to marry you when you were offered
by the Marchesa Guinigi. From this knowledge I cannot screen you.
God is my witness, I go, not desiring by my presence or my words to
reproach you further. But, as a man who prizes the honor of his house
and home, I cannot marry you. Tell the marchesa I shall keep my word
to her, although I break the marriage-contract. She will find the
money placed as she desired.

MARIO NOBILI.

"PALAZZO NOBILI, LUCCA."

Little by little Enrica read the whole, sentence by sentence. At first
the full horror of the words was veiled. They came to her in a dazed,
stupid way. A mist gathered about her. There was a buzzing in her ears
that deadened her brain. She forced herself to read over the letter
again. Then her heart stood still with terror--her cheeks burned--her
head reeled. A deadly cold came over her. Of all within that letter
she understood nothing but the words, "I am gone from you forever."
Gone!--Nobili gone! Never to speak to her again in that sweet
voice!--never to press his lips to hers!--never to gather her to him
in those firm, strong arms! O God! then she must die! If Nobili were
gone, she must die! A terrible pang shot through her; then a great
calmness came over her, and she was very still. "Die!--yes--why
not?--Die!"

Clutching the letter in her icy hand, Enrica looked round with pale,
tremulous eyes, from which the light has faded. It could not be the
same world of an hour ago. Death had come into it--she is about to
die. Yet the sun shone fiercely upon her face as she turned it upward
and struck upon her eyes. The children laughed over the chestnuts
spluttering in the ashes. Pipa sang merrily above at the open window.
A bird--was it a raven?--poised itself in the air; the cattle grazed
peacefully on the green slopes of the opposite mountain, and a drove
of pigs ran downward to drink at a little pool. She alone has changed.

A dull, dim consciousness drew her forward toward the low wall, and
the abyss that yawned beneath. There she should lie at peace. There
the stil