’Twas nearly twilight, and Francesca Amedi sat in a richly furnished
apartment with her brother and her cousin. One of them had been making a
communication to her to which she had listened in silence, but with
wrapt attention. Her stately form, as he continued his story, became
more majestic, her bosom heaved with concealed emotion, and, as she
swept back with her beautiful hand the rich raven tresses, her dark eyes
flashed like diamonds glittering in the light.
“So you think he loves me not,” she said, after a pause, as her cousin
walked toward the window to examine the tapestry which hung from the
walls.
“By St. Jago!” returned her brother, “an ice-hill on the summit of the
Alps, could not have been colder than he was when speaking of thee.
‘’Twas an old compact,’ he said, ‘and he was here to fulfill it.’ By the
souls of those who have gone before me! he could not have spoken more
churlishly if he had been talking about a new doublet he had agreed to
take upon a certain day.”
“I love him,” Francesca said, as she bit her lip till it became
bloodless, “but he acts not wisely for his happiness or mine. He knows
not what it is to put a slight upon Francesca Amedi.”
“Were it not,” Jacopa observed, “that his power, united with our own,
will crush the whole race of the detested Donati, I would spurn his
unwilling alliance, and he should die e’er he be thy husband. As it is,”
he added, “we must dress our face in smiles, and thou must wed him.”
“I would do so,” Francesca said, as she fixed her eyes with a rigid look
upon her brother, “were it only to make him feel what I have endured.”
“Before our very eyes,” Jacopa remarked, “he received without apology or
explanation, a dainty billet from some shameless mistress.”
“Ay,” added Baptista, who had by this time concluded his careless
scrutiny, and was listening to the conversation, “and if my memory
serves me not a treacherous trick, that same page, who bore the
silken-bound counsel, I have seen in attendance on our _dearly loved
friend_, Donati’s widow.”
“If I had thought so,” exclaimed Jacopa, “I would have twisted the neck
of the young go-between, even in the presence of Buondlemonte.”
“No, no,” Francesca said, as she waved her hand, “it cannot be. He would
not—he dare not—offer me so great an insult as to receive a love-token
from one of that house. He dare not, reckless as he is, place me in
competition with the puling baby Donati calls her daughter.”
Baptista was about to repeat his opinion concerning the identity of the
page, but he had scarcely commenced before Buondlemonte entered the
apartment. Both Jacopa and Baptista exchanged an apparently cordial
greeting with the new comer, and then retired, leaving him alone with
Francesca.
“At last, Buondlemonte,” Francesca said, when they were left alone, “at
last thou hast found time to see me.”
“The performance of a service for a friend,” Buondlemonte observed, as
he touched with his lips the white hand which was extended toward him,
“prevented the earlier presentation of my duty to thee.”
“It was not well,” she remarked, “after so long an absence, to give
others a preference, and leave your promised wife neglected, if not
forgotten. This was not an act of the cherished companion of former
days; it was not the act of the noble youth who left Florence five years
ago, betrothed to Francesca Amedi; thou no longer lovest me,
Buondlemonte, or thou wouldst not have been thus slow to visit me.”
Buondlemonte thought that the charge might have been made with equal
justice at any period of his existence, but he did not give utterance to
the thought.
“If my tardiness gives offence,” he said, coldly, “I pray that thou wilt
pardon it; I will be scrupulous not to repeat it.”
“Thou art as chilling in thy kindness as thou art in thy coldness,” she
observed, with a short hysterical laugh, and then turned the
conversation into another channel.
After an hour’s constrained intercourse, Buondlemonte rose to depart.
“I fear me,” she said, as she thought of the letter her brother had
spoken of, “that some fairer lady than Francesca pines for thy society,
and lures thee from my side.”
“Thou hast no cause to think so,” he replied, evasively, as he raised
her hand respectfully to his lips.
She placed her hand firmly upon his arm and looked with her large,
eloquent eyes steadily in his face.
“See that I have not,” she said, in a voice which had lost all its
natural melody. “See that I have not. Thou mayst ensure my love, if ’tis
worthy of an effort, but remember! I will brook no rival in thy
affections—Francesca Amedi knows how to protect herself!”
“By all the torturing fates that ever turned awry love’s currents!”
exclaimed Buondlemonte, as he reached the street, “but my destined
spouse seems to be formed more in the mould of the tigress than the
dove. A further promise,” he muttered ironically, “of our mutual
happiness!”