through the apartments, with spectral stillness, toward his wife's room. His hard, cold face had a glacial intensity that froze with horror the valet who saw him pass. Reaching the door of his wife's room, he entered without knocking.
The Marchioness was not at the opera in the evening, nor at the ball afterward, nor was she seen during the next day. The Marquis and Marchioness di Sangrido had returned to Rieti. As the carriage thundered into the town, the blinds were closed; there was no beaming bridal face at the window; there were hurry and stern command, and the great gate closed behind the carriage in sullen gloom.
In was a solemn and melancholy supper that the Marquis and his wife eat that night. From his cold, hard face the snake had vanished, but its frigid ferocity was more terrible; and the pale marble rigidity of his wife was sadder to see. She rose from the table and passed alone through the vast, cold, silent apartments toward her chamber. Her heart was stony with the fixed resolve not to be baulked of life, and love, and happiness, but at some time, by some means, to escape the imprisonment of that palace, and dare the worst for Giulio. She reached her room and dismissed her maid, who withdrew, leaving her alone. Through the lofty windows the full moonlight streamed, and flooded that young beautiful woman who stood with her hands clasped before her, and her head leaning against the window-frame. She was entirely abandoned to the glowing remembrance of the last few weeks. One image, one memory, one hope, one thought, possessed her. She was a child in knowledge and in power, but a woman in passionate emotion. Like a stormy sea ebbing and flowing fiercely in a cavern, her feelings, and wishes, and vows, fluctuated through her mind, and she stood confounded by the greatness and glory of the passion that agitated her whole being. She was its slave, but know not how to obey it. The night waned, and she stood musing, her hands still clasped, her head leaning, when suddenly she heard a chorus of late revellers, artists returning from a festa:
Andare sul mare,
Col sposo del man,
Non puo consolare!"
