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Updated: June 18, 2025
"Dare you deny that you are his mistress?" The shock of the words overcame Enrica. She fixes her eyes on her aunt as if not understanding their meaning. Then a deep blush covers her from head to foot; she trembles and presses both her hands to her bosom as if in pain. "Spare her, spare her!" is heard in less audible sounds from Trenta to the marchesa. The marchesa tosses her head defiantly.
"Oh! do not say too much, dear Nobili," she repeated almost to herself, "or " Her voice dropped. She looked toward the spot where the snake had fallen, and shuddered. Nobili did not then reply, but, taking Enrica by the hand, he led her up a flight of steps to a higher terrace, where a cypress avenue threw long shadows across the marble pavement.
It broke the mid-day silence. Argo barked loudly. "Dio Gesù!" Pipa cried wildly out. "The signorina, she is dead! Help! help!" Many hours had passed. Enrica lay still unconscious upon her bed, her face framed in her golden hair, her blue eyes open, her limbs stiff, her body cold.
Saying this, she closed her lips tightly. Trenta, in the heat of his enthusiasm for Enrica, had gone too far. He felt it; he hastened to rectify his error. "Every thing that concerns you and your family, Marchesa Guinigi, is a subject of overwhelming interest to me." Now the cavaliere spoke in his blandest manner. The smoothness of the courtier seemed to unknit the wrinkles on his face.
I must hear your answer from yourself." The marchesa spoke out of the darkness. She shrank from allowing Fra Pacifico to scrutinize the exultation marked on her every feature. "My aunt, if Nobili comes here to claim me, I will marry him," answered Enrica, more firmly. "But stop" her eye had meanwhile traveled to the letter still lying on the table a horrible doubt crossed her mind.
"That great name shall not die," spoke the deep voice of Fra Pacifico from the background; "I call a blessing upon it, and upon the present act. The name shall live. When we are dead and rotting in our graves, a race shall rise from them" and he pointed to Nobili and Enrica "that shall recall the great legends of the past among the citizens of Lucca."
Then she presses her hand to her forehead, on which the perspiration had risen in beads. "Alas! I did not know it!" Enrica is now sobbing bitterly. "Why oh! why, did you not trust me?" In a strange, weary-sounding voice the marchesa continues: "Let us not speak of it. Enrica" she turns her gray eyes full upon her, as she stands motionless in front of the pillared casement "Enrica, you must choose.
With that sun-ray upon his face, Nobili seemed to her, at that moment, more than mortal! "Angel!" exclaimed Count Nobili, wrought up to sudden passion, "can you doubt me?" Before Enrica could reply, a snake, warmed by the hot sun, curled upward from the terraced wall behind them, where it had basked, and glided swiftly between them. Nobili's heel was on it; in an instant he had crushed its head.
Trenta, sitting there, his hands crossed upon his knees, his eyes fixed upon Enrica, looked suddenly aged. How all this had come about he could not even guess. He had heard Pipa's screams, and so had the marchesa, and he had come, and he and Pipa together had raised her up and placed her on her bed; and the marchesa had charged him to watch her, and let her know when she came to her senses.
"Is the noble young Lady Enrica unwell?" asks the persevering sindaco, gazing earnestly through the window. He knows his doom. He has nothing to hope from the marchesa's clemency, so he may as well gratify his burning curiosity by a question about the much-beloved Enrica, who must certainly have been ill-used by her aunt to keep so much out of sight.
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