CUNIGUNDA’S MISGIVINGS.
While Lady Selina was writing her letter, Cunigunda tried to repose on
her sofa, in order that she might be fully equal to the grand ball. But
she was rather restless and uneasy. She had remarked a great change in
the Count’s manner towards her during the last week. He treated her with
a kind of cold politeness which puzzled and mortified her; for of late,
since recent interviews with Carlo, some of her former love, mingled
with intense pity, revived and tormented her with a kind of remorse.
Quite a new feeling--a vivid remembrance of her past life, of actions
which at the time did not seem like crimes--now appeared in a startling
light, and her thoughts unfolded themselves into some such words as
these: “It was all the effect of that picture in the blue room, and of
that face in the gallery. It must have been the effect of the picture,
so like her, that made her real face haunt me in that hall! What if I
should see it again to-night during the ball! Oh! Dorina, I seem now to
wish I had been more like you! I feel that you are happier than I am, or
ever shall be. Oh, Dorina! have pity on me! For if there is a God, you
must have been made in the image of the divinity, for I can imagine
nothing better or more pure. And yet I--I hated you, and--O God! how
often I hear your dying cry!--it wakes me in the night; and now, since I
came here and saw that old picture, I seem to be continually haunted by
her presence, and every look on Alphonso’s face seems to reproach me for
depriving him of her.
“Strange I never believed in any hereafter before, and now I feel as if
I were doomed to--to what? an eternity of my present state of mind, for
no hell could be worse--no torture greater. But it must end. This new
torture cannot last. What a fool I am!--I who have always laughed at
superstition and prayer, and hated all what are called good people. Why,
then, did I ever love Alphonso?--does this show that I could ever, ever
become like Dorina? No, for I hate her still--all the more that he loved
her, and held her up as an example for me. For me--so superior to her in
beauty and--and genius. Yes, I could learn everything without trouble. I
know I excelled them all in beauty, but----” and she got up suddenly to
look at her own face in the glass. It was, in spite of her unwonted
despondency, brilliantly radiant; she looked on it with triumphant
admiration, and yet the pale face of the lovely Dorina seemed hovering
in the background, gazing at her with a reproachful look.
She turned suddenly round as if she really expected to see the shade of
the murdered Dorina. But nothing was there except the Pietra-dura
against the wall, and a splendid ball dress which lay extended on the
bed behind the spot where she stood.
“Is it all my own fancy?--of course it is. Her spirit does not exist.
She can neither know nor feel anything about me. So it must have been
fancy when she appeared up in that gallery, because my mind had been so
foolishly upset and engrossed by that old picture which is such a
wonderful likeness. I’ll have it burnt.”
A knock at the door interrupted the current of Cunigunda’s thoughts, for
it was her maid, Cattarina Diabelli, who came to say that M. Isidore was
waiting to dress her hair. So she was soon immersed in all the pleasure
and labours of her elaborate toilette: for a time Dorina’s image was
banished from her mind, and she began to anticipate, with triumphant
delight, the glorious fête she had devised.