At these words she rose from her knees and stood upright. Making an effort to fasten her cloak with her trembling hands, she moved hesitatingly toward the brigand's coffin and leaned over it, looking in with a faint light of hope as well as curiosity in her haggard face. I watched her in vague wonderment--she had grown old so suddenly. The peach-like bloom and delicacy of her flesh had altogether disappeared--her skin appeared drawn and dry as though parched in tropical heat. Her hair was disordered, and fell about her in clustering showers of gold--that, and her eyes, were the only signs of youth about her. A sudden wave of compassion swept over my soul.
"Oh wife!" I exclaimed--"wife that I so ardently loved--wife that I would have died for indeed, had you bade me!--why did you betray me? I thought you truth itself--ay! and if you had but waited for one day after you thought me dead, and THEN chosen Guido for your lover, I tell you, so large was my tenderness, I would have pardoned you! Though risen from the grave, I would have gone away and made no sign--yes if you had waited--if you had wept for me ever so little! But when your own lips confessed your crime--when I knew that within three months of our marriage-day you had fooled me--when I learned that my love, my name, my position, my honor, were used as mere screens to shelter your intrigue with the man I called friend!--God! what creature of mortal flesh and blood could forgive such treachery? I am no more than others--but I loved you--and in proportion to my love, so is the greatness of my wrongs!"
She listened--she advanced a little toward me--a faint smile dawned on her pallid lips--she whispered: "Fabio! Fabio!"
I looked at her--unconsciously my voice dropped into a cadence of intense melancholy softened by tenderness.
"Ay--Fabio! What wouldst thou with a ghost of him? Does it not seem strange to thee--that hated name?--thou, Nina, whom I loved as few men love women--thou who gavest me no love at all--thou, who hast broken my heart and made me what I am!"
A hard, heavy sob rose in my throat and choked my utterance. I was young; and the cruel waste and destruction of my life seemed at that moment more than I could bear. She heard me, and the smile brightened more warmly on her countenance. She came close to me--half timidly yet coaxingly she threw one arm about my neck--her bosom heaved quickly.
"Fabio," she murmured--"Fabio, forgive me! I spoke in haste--I do not hate thee! Come! I will make amends for all thy suffering--I will love thee--I will be true to thee, I will be all thine! See! thou knowest I have not lost my beauty!"