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Updated: June 16, 2025
"Oh, no question as to their identity! Sure enough, it was my aunt and the girls! That queenly Amazon is my aunt, Countess Diodora. You are surprised? I see, you supposed that an aunt must necessarily be some aged, corpulent lady, fond of her game of 'patience, and secretly indulging in a sip. My aunt is but one year my senior, and I am barely thirty.
If I had had a particle of good judgment or common sense, I should have taken the bills I had paid for at the bank to the solicitor who acted both for Siegfried and myself, should have authorised that gentleman to pay the twenty thousand florins Siegfried had lent me when I came into possession of my house, and I myself should have written two pleasant letters one to Countess Diodora, thanking her for her great and disinterested kindness and hospitality, and the other to Siegfried, notifying him formally of what I had done, and, at the same time, telling him that my resolution was firm, and that no persuasion on his part would shake it.
What is Siegfried's object in the deception?" "You show too much agitation. Show me how to cut out the germ properly. This is the plan. After the ceremony, on the day when Diodora is confined to her room and I am with her, a festival banquet will be spread in the shooting-box.
"So it was all a conspiracy?" "Yes." "And Cenni's mock-marriage and your betrayal of the scheme?" "Were meant to win your confidence." "So Cenni co-operated with you?" "She had to. At first she opposed it, and meant to win you for herself. She is a poor girl, and dependent on Diodora's charity; and she had to give way." "And Diodora?" "It was she who designed the whole plot.
She was beautiful and intellectual, like Countess Diodora, and competition for her hand was naturally high among the young and old bachelors, and marriageable men of their set.
Bend down a little, so. You are all right, and I'll take you to Diodora; only wait here a little." She went in, but returned instantly, and beckoned me to follow her into a boudoir lighted by a lamp with a shade of green glass. Rich tapestry hangings divided the apartment. Flamma drew the hangings partly aside, motioned me to go near, and left the room, softly closing the entrance.
There was a long pause, and I thought best to take my leave. I turned first to Flamma, who laid both her hands in mine, and, looking up to me, asked me softly to return soon. Then Diodora languidly extended her hand to me, and I bowed over it with cool, studied politeness, and as I looked up I saw that Siegfried thought fit to shake my hand in honour of the new relation between us.
Oh, if I could tell you all! But you are proud and disdainful, I see. Perhaps you want to wait until Countess Diodora Vernöczy makes you a humble offer of her hand, and then maybe you would be proud, and consider about it." "Perhaps I should. Give me leave, ladies, to tell you a story the history of a very intimate friend, and from beginning to the end true to the letter. I shall invent nothing."
Her mouth is only opened when necessary to her own purposes; in such a case she does not recoil from the basest slander. Do you think I did not watch you two at that rose-bed? That I did not notice the glitter in your eye, the excited shaking of your hands? And do you know why she did it? Because the day before I had boldly told you to win Diodora.
The third, that tall, slender, somewhat haughty, but modest girl, who had approached to admire my roses, pleased me best; and then, too, their names "Diodora! Cenni! Flamma!" The first domineering, imposing; the second with a touch of the Bohemian or the gipsy; the third bewitching, enticing, a flame! Oh, what a moth I should make!
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