t all was well.

But she would not comply with Leo's request for his father's canzone,
_Quant e bella_, which she had sung with such effect the previous
evening. She left the gay company while they were all clamoring for
more, and insisted that I should urge the horses to the utmost as we
dashed back to Rome.

Our common anxiety to know the outcome of Maria Dovizio's visit to
Chigi's villa, together with her great longing for sympathy in this
crisis of her life, so wrought with the favouring opportunity of that
wild drive that Imperia granted me such a revelation of her inmost soul
as I believe no other man can boast, and I knew her that night as God
knew her.

She had sought Margherita the night before a criminal at heart, for she
had determined to sacrifice the girl. Imperia possessed a house in Rome.
It was on her lips to tell Margherita that Raphael, who had met with an
accident, was lying there at the point of death, and had sent for her to
come to him. She had already instructed her servants, and had Margherita
once entered that house its doors would never again have been opened for
her.

But Imperia's guardian angel was kind. Before the words could be uttered
Margherita had poured out her heart in gratitude to the woman whom she
believed to be her benefactress. While the girl spoke, Imperia strove to
steel herself, repeating mentally the round of cruel reasoning which had
been the Ixion's wheel on which her tortured brain had unceasingly
revolved:

"If Margherita speaks to Maria Dovizio, Maria will never be reconciled
with Raphael. Unless Maria weds Raphael she will surely marry Chigi.
Either Margherita or I must perish. Which shall it be?"

But gradually this fiend's chatter grew less insistent and Imperia heard
instead Margherita's impassioned protestations. She was happy,
blissfully happy, and owed it all to the disinterested kindness of her
patroness; for though Raphael had always loved her he had been bound by
a hateful engagement to a cold, proud woman, who had cast him aside for
a wealthier suitor. Her memory had rankled in the mind of both,
poisoning their happiness, for Margherita well realised that she was
herself but a peasant, not to be compared in birth and breeding to this
high lady. Until lately she had not deemed herself worthy to mate with
so exalted a personage as her lover. But since she had known Imperia she
had comprehended how such a miracle might be. "For," said she, "you are
just l