alone with the Countess.

"I scarcely expected him. He knows the ill-feeling towards his
countrymen amongst Italians, and he rarely enters society where he may
meet them."

"It is strange that he should marry one!" said she, half musingly.

"He fell in love,--there's the whole secret of it," said the Countess.
"He fell in love, and his passion encountered certain difficulties. His
rank was one of them, Ida's indifference another."

"And how have they been got over?"

"Evaded rather than surmounted. He has only his own consent after all."

"And Ida, does she care for him?"

"I suspect not; but she will marry him. Pique will often do what
affection would fail in. The secret history of the affair is this: There
was a youth at Massa, who, while he lived there, made our acquaintance
and became even intimate at the Villa: he was a sculptor of some talent,
and, as many thought, of considerable promise. I engaged him to give Ida
lessons in modelling, and, in this way, they were constantly together.
Whether Ida liked him or not I cannot say; but it is beyond a doubt that
he loved her. In fact, everything he produced in his art only showed
what his mind was full of,--her image was everywhere. This aroused
Wahnsdorf's jealousy, and he urged me strongly to dismiss Greppi, and
shut my doors to him. At first I consented, for I had a strange sense,
not exactly of dislike, but misgiving, of the youth. I had a feeling
towards him that if I attempted to convey to you, it would seem as
though in all this affair I had suffered myself to be blinded by
passion, not guided by reason. There were times that I felt a deep
interest in the youth: his genius, his ardor, his very poverty
engaged my sympathy; and then, stronger than all these, was a strange,
mysterious sense of terror at sight of him, for he was the very image of
one who has worked all the evil of my life."

"Was not this a mere fancy?" said the Princess, compassionately, for she
saw the shuddering emotion these words had cost her.

"It was not alone his look," continued the Countess, speaking now with
impetuous eagerness, "it was not merely his features, but their every
play and movement; his gestures when excited; the very voice was _his_.
I saw him once excited to violent passion; it was some taunt that
Wahnsdorf uttered about men of unknown or ignoble origin; and then
He--he himself seemed to stand before me as I have so often seen him,
in his terrible outbursts of rag