e. The sight brought back to me the
dreadful recollection of those scenes,--scenes," said she, looking
wildly around her, "that if these old walls could speak, might freeze
your heart where you are sitting.

"You have heard, but you cannot know, the miserable life we led
together; the frantic jealousy that maddened every hour of his
existence; how, in all the harmless freedom of our Italian life, he saw
causes of suspicion and distrust; how, by his rudeness to this one,
his coldness to that, he estranged me from all who have been my dearest
intimates and friends, dictating to me the while the custom of a land
and a people I had never seen nor wished to see; till at last I was left
a mockery to some, an object of pity to others, amidst a society where
once I reigned supreme,--and all for a man that I had ceased to love! It
was from this same life of misery, unrewarded by the affection by which
jealousy sometimes compensates for its tyranny, that I escaped, to
attach myself to the fortunes of that unhappy Princess whose lot bore
some resemblance to my own.

"I know well that he ascribed my desertion to another cause, and--shall
I own it to you?--I had a savage pleasure in leaving him to the
delusion. It was the only vengeance within my reach, and I grasped it
with eagerness. Nothing was easier for me than to disprove it,--a mere
word would have shown the falsehood of the charge; but I would not utter
it. I knew his nature well, and that the insult to his name and the
stain to his honor would be the heaviest of all injuries to him; and
they were so. He drove _me_ from my home,--I banished _him_ from the
world. It is true, I never reckoned on the cruel blow he had yet in
store for me, and when it fell I was crushed and stunned. There was now
a declared war between us,--each to do their worst to the other. It
was less succumbing before him, than to meditate and determine on the
future, that I fled from Florence. It was not here and in such a society
I should have to blush for any imputation. But I had always held my
place proudly, perhaps too proudly, here, and I did not care to enter
upon that campaign of defence--that stooping to cultivate alliances,
that humble game of conciliation--that must ensue.

"I went away into banishment. I went to Corsica, and thence to Massa.
I was meditating a journey to the East. I was even speculating on
establishing myself there for the rest of my life, when your letters
changed my plans.