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Updated: May 19, 2025
"My child," said the Count, taking her tenderly in his arms and gazing fondly into her upturned, anxious face, "I have to-day received some very startling intelligence." Zuleika's heart beat wildly at this announcement; she felt convinced that the very startling intelligence concerned her unfortunate, long-silent lover.
"Because, did you know the depth of his infamy, you would spurn him from you!" Suddenly a grave suspicion stole into Zuleika's mind and made her tremble from head to foot. Might it not be that Espérance had been as deeply involved in the mysterious and infamous affair of which he declined to speak as Giovanni Massetti himself?
"So be it!" he cried into Zuleika's ear cried loudly, for it seemed as though all the Wagnerian orchestras of Europe, with the Straussian ones thrown in, were here to clash in unison the full volume of right music for the glory of the reprieve. The fact was that the Judas boat had just bumped Univ., exactly opposite the Judas barge.
I wonder," she said, glancing at his breast, "if YOUR pink pearl would have turned black? And I wonder if YOU would have taken the trouble to change that extraordinary coat you are wearing?" In sooth, no costume could have been more beautifully Cimmerian than Zuleika's. And yet, thought the Duke, watching her as the concert proceeded, the effect of her was not lugubrious. Her darkness shone.
Then he gazed into her eyes like one entranced. Woman's wit and tenderness had triumphed. The maniac whom even the mention of Zuleika's name had failed to touch was completely under Mme. Morrel's influence. She had subdued him; she could do with him as she wished. "A miracle! a miracle!" cried both the cicerones simultaneously. "The Blessed Virgin be praised!"
In the centre, aloft on an inverted tin that had contained Abernethy biscuits, stood a blue plush frame, with an inner rim of brass, several sizes too big for the picture-postcard installed in it. Zuleika's image gazed forth with a smile that was obviously not intended for the humble worshipper at this execrable shrine.
Out of doors she was not less evidently Zuleika's. Not that she aped her mistress. The resemblance had come by force of propinquity and devotion. Nature had laid no basis for it. Not one point of form or colour had the two women in common. It has been said that Zuleika was not strictly beautiful. Melisande, like most Frenchwomen, was strictly plain.
Monte-Cristo's daughter divined this, and, going to the former flower-girl, said to her: "Is there anything I can do for you, Sister Annunziata? If so you have only to ask it!" Annunziata laid her hand upon Zuleika's shoulder, asking, in a tone that notwithstanding all her efforts to control it was not a little unsteady and tremulous: "Do you love him? do you love the Viscount Massetti?"
No, he'd come back with Lottie, his wife, to show his father that there was one of the family that couldn't be fooled and bullied, and wouldn't put up with it any longer. There was going to be a fair division of the property, and his sister Annie's property, and hers Zuleika's too, if she'd have the pluck to speak up for herself. All this and much more he said.
No doubt, the young elms lining the straight way to the barges had seen him coming; but any whispers of their leaves were lost in the murmur of the crowd returning from the race. Here, at length, came the torrent of which the Duke had spoken; and Zuleika's heart rose at it. Here was Oxford!
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