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Updated: June 26, 2025
A distant handbell tinkled, and as Pina heard it through the open door she rose to her feet, for it was Ortensia's means of calling her. Cucurullo thought over the conversation and reasoned about it with himself most of the night, and, so far as Pina was concerned, the more he reflected the farther he got from the truth.
The nurse spoke three times before Ortensia heard her and looked up. 'They say well that music is a thief, observed the middle-aged woman in grey, enigmatically, as she stood with her hands folded under her black apron, gazing intently at Ortensia's face. The young girl laughed as she rose.
Stradella had taken Ortensia's hand and kissed it when the little ceremony was over, but that was all, and neither could find words to speak. Pina took off the beautiful veil, folded it on the polished table, and rolled it up to carry away, for the Mother Superior wished Ortensia to keep it.
The Cardinal went on speaking with the utmost coolness and without heeding her emotion. 'If what my nephew believed last night could be proved true, madam, your husband's neck would be in great danger, and you yourself would probably spend several years in a place of solitude and penance. Ortensia's horror increased, and she could no longer speak.
Don Alberto was a professional love-maker, and at Ortensia's last speech he laughed so readily and naturally that she could not help joining him. 'The truth is, he said presently, 'the Queen is going to have a little comedy performed by her friends, and I have been giving you some bits from my part.
He even smiled faintly, as he had done when he had returned Ortensia's things. He turned in the top and bottom of the sheet so that the edges just met, and after creasing the bends with his large pale thumb-nail he doubled the folded paper neatly, and then turned up the ends and slipped one into the other.
It was no doubt in order to be revenged on him that she helped you to run away. Ortensia's hand strained upon the corner of the pedestal till Altieri could count the small blue veins and purple arteries that showed through the white skin.
While the music lasted she never took her eyes from Stradella, whether he was turned from the audience towards his musicians to direct them, beating time in the air with a thin roll of ruled music-paper, or when he faced the audience and sung himself, to the accompaniment of only four stringed instruments. 'Admirable! whispered Alberto, bending low to Ortensia's ear.
For all he had ever known of joy on earth, or ever hoped for, he would not have wished that Ortensia's face could change into any that had once been dear to him under the summer moonlight of the south; yet he felt strangely constrained and awkward, like a schoolboy in love, not knowing what to do or say in the overwhelming daylight.
The young musician drew a deep breath of relief, for his gnawing anxiety on Ortensia's account had been far harder to bear during his confinement than any bodily hardship, and he had not at first thought it safe to ask any questions of his liberator.
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