nk you for believing that much of me," Cecilia answered humbly.
"I thought I loved him."

"You sent for him this morning, because you had suddenly persuaded
yourself that you had made a great mistake. When you heard that he could
not come, you wrote the letter, and when it was written you sent it off
as fast as you could, for fear that you would not send it at all. Is
that true?"

"Yes. That is just what happened. How did you know?"

"Listen to me, please, for d'Este's sake. If you had not felt that you
were perhaps making another mistake, should you have been in such a
hurry to send the letter?"

Cecilia hesitated an instant.

"It was a hard thing to do. That is why I made haste to get it over. I
knew it would hurt him, but I thought it was wrong to deceive him for
even a few hours, after I had understood myself."

"It would have been kinder to wait until you could see him, and break it
gently to him. He was ill when he got your letter, and it made him
worse."

"How is he?" Cecilia asked quietly, a little ashamed of not having
enquired already. "It is nothing very serious, is it? Only a little
influenza, he said."

"He is not dangerously ill, but he had a good deal of fever this
afternoon. You will not see him for a week, I fancy. That is the reason
why I am here. I want you to postpone your decision, at least until he
is well and you have talked with him."

"But I have decided already. I shall take all the blame. I will tell my
friends that it is all my fault."

"Is that the only answer you can give me for him?"

"Yes. What can I say? I do not love him. I never shall."

"What if something happens?"

"What?"

"Suppose that I go to him to-morrow morning, and tell him what you say,
and that when I have left him there alone with his servant, as I must in
the course of the day, he locks the door, and in a fit of despair puts a
bullet through his head? What then?"

Cecilia leaned forward, wide-eyed and frightened.

"You do not really believe that he would kill himself?" she cried in a
low voice.

"I think it is more than likely," Lamberti answered quietly enough.
"D'Este is the most good-hearted, charitable, honourable fellow in the
world, but he believes in nothing beyond death. We differ about those
questions, and never talk about them; but he has often spoken of killing
himself when he has been depressed. I remember that we had an argument
about it on the very afternoon when we both first met you."