I rose from my seat beside her. I could not answer for my own composure while sitting so close to the actual murderess of MY friend and HER lover. Had she forgotten her own "familiar" treatment of the dead man--the thousand nameless wiles and witcheries and tricks of her trade, by which she had beguiled his soul and ruined his honor?
"I am glad you are satisfied with my action in that affair," I said, coldly and steadily. "I myself regret the death of the unfortunate young man, and shall continue to do so. My nature, unhappily, is an oversensitive one, and is apt to be affected by trifles. But now, mia bella, farewell until to-morrow--happy to-morrow!--when I shall call you mine indeed!"
A warm flush tinted her cheeks; she came to me where I stood, and leaned against me.
"Shall I not see you again till we meet in the church?" she inquired, with a becoming bashfulness.
"No. I will leave you this last day of your brief widowhood alone. It is not well that I should obtrude myself upon your thoughts or prayers. Stay!" and I caught her hand which toyed with the flower in my buttonhole. "I see you still wear your former wedding-ring. May I take it off?"
"Certainly." And she smiled while I deftly drew off the plain gold circlet I had placed there nearly four years since.
"Will you let me keep it?"
"If you like. I would rather not see it again."
"You shall not," I answered, as I slipped it into my pocket. "It will be replaced by a new one to-morrow--one that I hope may be the symbol of more joy to you than this has been."
And as her eyes turned to my face in all their melting, perfidious languor, I conquered my hatred of her by a strong effort, and stooped and kissed her. Had I yielded to my real impulses, I would have crushed her cruelly in my arms, and bruised her delicate flesh with the brutal ferocity of caresses born of bitterest loathing, not love. But no sign of my aversion escaped me--all she saw was her elderly looking admirer, with his calmly courteous demeanor, chill smile, and almost parental tenderness; and she judged him merely as an influential gentleman of good position and unlimited income, who was about to make her one of the most envied women in all Italy.
The fugitive resemblance she traced in me to her "dead" husband was certainly attributed by her to a purely accidental likeness common to many persons in this world, where every man, they say, has his double, and for that matter every woman also. Who does not remember the touching surprise of Heinrich Heine when, on visiting the picture-gallery of the Palazzo Durazzo in Genoa, he was brought face to face with the portrait, as he thought, of a dead woman he had loved--"Maria la morte." It mattered not to him that the picture was very old, that it had been painted by Giorgio Barbarelli centuries before his "Maria" could have lived; he simply declares: "Il est vraiment d une ressemblance admirable, ressemblant jusqu'au silence de la mort!"