Leonilda

“ But I am sure that if I live with you my passion for her will be stilled, but otherwise I cannot answer for myself. I shall fly, but flight will not bring me happiness. Leonilda charms me still more by her intelligence than by her beauty. I was sure that she loved me so well that I did not attempt to seduce her, lest thereby I should weaken my hold on her affections; and as I wanted to make her happy I wished to deserve her esteem. I longed to possess her, but in a lawful manner, so that our rights should have been equal. We have created an angel, Lucrezia, and I cannot imagine how the duke . ”

“ I sat between her and Leonilda at dinner; and as I could no longer think of the daughter, it was natural that my old flame for Lucrezia should rekindle; and whether from the effect of her gaiety and beauty, or from my need of someone to love, or from the excellence of the wine, I found myself in love with her by the dessert, and asked her to take the place which her daughter was to have filled.
“I will marry you,” said I, “and we will all of us go to Rome on Monday, for since Leonilda is my daughter I do not like to leave her at Naples.” ”

“ I considered myself as a married man and under obligation to alter my way of living, and I stopped playing. I had won more than fifteen thousand ducats, and this sum added to what I had before and Leonilda’s dowry should have sufficed for an honest livelihood.
Next day, as I was at supper with the duke and Leonilda, she said,—
“What will my mother say to-morrow evening, when she sees you?”
“She will say that you are silly to marry a stranger whom you have only known for a week. ”

“ I am afraid that if I had a lover like St. Januarius I should not grant him many favours.”
“Is he very ugly, then?”
“If his portrait is a good likeness, you can see for yourself by examining his statue.”
Gaiety leads to freedom, and freedom to friendship. Mental graces are superior to bodily charms.
Leonilda’s frankness inspired my confidence, and I led the conversation to love, on which she talked like a past mistress.
“Love,” said she, “unless it leads to the possession of the beloved object, is a mere torment; if bounds are placed to passion, love must die.” ”

“ We mutely caressed each other. Leonilda gave and received the tenderest kisses without seeming to notice what desires she might cause to arise; no doubt she knew that as her father I should have strength to resist, and she was right. One gets used to everything, and I was ashamed to be sad any longer.
I told Donna Lucrezia of the curious welcome her sister had given me in Rome, and she went off into peals of laughter. We reminded each other of the night at Tivoli, and these recollections softened our hearts. From these softened feelings to love is but a short way ”

“ The worthy marquis gave me a great surprise on the eve of my departure. We were alone together, and he began by saying that the Duke of Matalone had told him the reason which had prevented me marrying Leonilda, and that he had always admired my generosity in making her a present of five thousand ducats, though I was far from rich.
"These five thousand ducats," he added, "with seven thousand from the duke, composed her dower, and I have added a hundred thousand, so that she is sure of a comfortable living, even if I die without a successor. ”

“ Do not sorrow for Lychorida, you have a nurse in me. Your beauty is quite changed with this unprofitable woe. Come, give me your flowers, the sea-air will spoil them; and walk with Leonine: the air is fine, and will enliven you. Come, Leonine, take her by the arm, and walk with her.' 'No, madam,' said Marina, 'I pray you let me not deprive you of your servant': for Leonine was one of Dionysia's attendants. 'Come, come,' said this artful woman, who wished for a presence to leave her alone with Leonine, 'I love the prince, your father, and I love you. We every day expect your father here ”

“ There are others to whom you are necessary. Leonie, I must tell you, great sin though I am committing in doing so. My darling, I love you with all the soul in my body, with all the strength of my being. Can you not see it? Do you not know it? Leonie, what have I said to cause you to look at me like that?"
"You love me?" she whispered, the words more a breath than an articulation—"you love me?"
"Dearest, can you doubt it? I know that I am the greatest scoundrel living, to tell you so. But how can I see you in such distress and not speak, when my heart is full to overflowing? ”

“ The only thing that disturbed me seriously was the constant presence of the Marquis de ——. He had obtained an introduction to the princess, on what pretext I have no idea, and amused her by his caustic, ill-natured chatter. Then he would draw Leoni into another room and have long interviews with him, from which Leoni always came with a gloomy brow.
"I hate and despise Lorenzo," he often said to me; "he is the vilest cur I know; he is capable of anything." ”

“ Leoni sat down at the table and burst into tears.
"This is the effect of brandy," said the marquis, calmly, putting the glass to his lips. "I warned you; it always takes hold of the nerves."
"Let me alone, brute beast!" shouted Leoni, giving the table a push which nearly overturned it on the marquis; "let me weep in peace. You don't know what love is!"
"Love!" said the marquis in a theatrical tone, mimicking Leoni; "remorse! those are very sonorous and dramatic words. When do you send Juliette to the hospital?" ”

“ So, but in a less rapt and mystical sense than that in which the holy virgin of Siena had poured out her soul, thought the young Duchess Leonora, wife of Pietro, second son of Cosimo da Medici, Grand Duke of Florence.
The price of love, the price of love! For eleven days she had wept, burning to pay it—indignant, passionate, heart-broken, she had told herself. And now that the altar was ready and the blade bared, what was her desire? Only for mercy—only for life, shameful and abandoned if needs must be, but life on any terms, the least regarded, the most despised. ”

“ But I believe—and other women believed with me—that no man on earth ever felt and expressed love like Leoni. Superior to other men in evil and in good, he spoke another tongue, he had another expression, he had also another heart. I have heard an Italian woman say that a bouquet in Leoni's hand was more fragrant than in another man's, and it was so with everything. ”

“ My mother, amazed at my action, began to fear that I might be capable of having a will of my own. She talked to me gently, hoping that in a short time I would consent to dance, and that Leoni would ask me again, but I persisted in remaining in my seat. An hour or more later we heard Leoni's name several times amid the confused murmuring of the ball; some one passing near us said that he had lost six hundred louis.
"Very fine!" said my aunt dryly; "he will do well to look out for some nice girl with a handsome dowry." ”

“ Leonie, I love you."
Leonie said no word, but from her head to her feet swept a thrill which the man felt from his feet to his head.
He laughed again, laughed as a god might laugh with the world in his hand, and crushed her fiercely to him.
"Beloved! I love you! love you! love you! And you? Tell me you love me! Why, you dare not look me in the face and say no! You love me, dear! You are part of me; you are bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh! Sorrow shall not touch you when you are all mine, your joys shall be my joys! And—beloved, my children shall be your children!" ”

“ Beauteous Leonora! how little sensible are you to the charms of love! Did you know how to love like me, you would delight in secret to receive my vows; and, for some time at least, to conceal them from your father as from all the world. Oh! who can paint the charms of that mysterious intercourse, in which two hearts indulge, united by a passion as intense as pure." "It may have charms for you," replied Leonora; "to me, such intercourse would bring but sorrow: this refinement of tenderness but ill becomes a virtuous maiden. ”

“ With dawn came hope, came the jocund reassurance of the sun, of the familiar greetings and services and customs. It seemed impossible that tragedy could be lurking behind that kindly commonplace. Leonora’s spirits rose with the morning, heightened with the glowing day. Had the conquering glory of her beauty served her hitherto so implicitly to fail her now? If jealousy were at the bottom of this resentment, she carried the sweetest antidote to it in her bosom. ”

“ They were mad indeed the people, but none so mad as Leonie as she stood with feet apart glaring down at the ayah's sleek head, which she held by the hair, in one hand.
So mad was she that the priests drew back as from one divine; all but the high-caste youth who stood unnoticed amongst them and who advanced one step as Leonie raised her face to the moon.
"She of the full moon," she chanted, "was the first worshipped one with depths of days, of nights. They who, O worshipful one, gratify thee with offerings, those well doers are entered into thy firmament!" ”

“ Eloise de Chaumont marvelled at Leonora's wonderful beauty--at the profusion of her jetty hair--at the softened lustre of her large, full, shaded eyes--at the delicate carving of the ever varying features--at the undulating grace, flowing, with every movement of her rounded, symmetrical limbs, into some new form of loveliness. She thought, "Well, she is beautiful, indeed! No wonder Lorenzo loved her. But, on my faith, she does not appear one to treat any man cruelly. ”

“ The Queen, a true woman to her heart’s core, was wild with delight in the countless pretties of texture and adornment with which Leoncia’s wardrobe was stored. It was a maiden frolic for the pair of them, and a stitch here and a take-up there modified certain of Leoncia’s gowns to the Queen’s slenderness.
“No,” said Leoncia judicially. “You will not need a corset. You are the one woman in a hundred for whom a corset is not necessary. You have the roundest lines for a thin woman that I ever saw. ”

“ And naturally Leonie had responded to the mastery in the voice, as all women do respond when the voice is the right one; and a soft wave of colour swept from chin to brow as she turned from the gate, and walked through the doorway straight to her bedroom; while her future lord pranced furiously among the bric-a-brac, and her aunt's beads and bracelets clashed against the china as she wrung her hands over the tea things, and portending disaster. ”

“ Handsome men are an everyday sight in India, but this man was as the gods, and Leonie, beautiful, drugged Leonie, looked at him from the corner of her eyes as looks the wanton, and laughed.
"I will not kiss thee," he whispered, watching the colour sweep her face at his words, and smiling at the thudding of the heart beneath his hand. "Nay, I will not bruise thee nor cause thee blemish until the purdah hangs between us and the world. Look not at me thus-wise, and lift not the glory of thy lips, for I will not seize thee as a beggar seizes upon the pice. ”

“ Leoncia shook her head.
262“Then you do love Francis!” the Queen charged, smarting with disappointment.
“You have him,” said Leoncia.
“No; for you have taken him from me.”
Leoncia slowly and sadly shook her head and sadly gazed out over the heat-shimmering surface of Chiriqui Lagoon.
After a long lapse of silence, she said, wearily, “Believe that. Believe anything.”
“I divined it in you from the first,” the Queen cried. “You have a strange power over men. I am a woman not unbeautiful. Since I have been out in the world I have watched the eyes of men looking at me. ”

“ This poor Leonora, in her craven frenzy, condoned in her mind the offences of the monster in whose relentless grasp she now felt herself writhing. Her leaning towards him, her desire to propitiate, was like a lust. She would swear herself his creature, his sympathiser, his fellow-passionist, if only he would accept and spare her as such. Do not blame her over-harshly. The spirit crazed with fear of darkness has no volition but towards the light. ”

“ Do not imagine that I am so weak as to expect that the perusal of these letters will work a sudden change: but it is fit, that before you leave England you should know that Leonora is not a cold, sullen, or offended wife; but one who loves you most tenderly, most generously; who, concealing the agony of her heart, waits with resignation for the time when she will be your refuge, and the permanent blessing of your life. ”

“ For it is miserable to see a clean intelligence waver; and Leonora wavered.
You are to understand that Leonora loved Edward with a passion that was yet like an agony of hatred. And she had lived with him for years and years without addressing to him one word of tenderness. I don't know how she could do it. At the beginning of that relationship she had been just married off to him. She had been one of seven daughters in a bare, untidy Irish manor-house to which she had returned from the convent I have so often spoken of. ”

“ As the dog-cart was crossing the railway bridge at Shawport, at the foot of the rise to Hillport, Leonora overtook her eldest daughter. She drew up. From the height of the dog-cart she looked at her child; and the girlishness of Ethel's form, the self-consciousness of newly-arrived womanhood in her innocent and timid eyes, the virgin richness of her vitality, made Leonora feel sad, superior, and protective. ”