But the last hour had struck for the Signora Cadori.  With her dying breath she spoke of Edoardo.  ‘You love,’ she said, ’and your love may be the source of good to you.  Take this cross, which I have worn on my heart since the day of your birth; it was the gift of your father; take it, and wear it in memory of your poor mother.  You will find in my chest a sum of money, and some bills on the imperial bank of Vienna.  It is no great riches, but it is sufficient for the unforeseen wants that may press upon a woman.  I would never consent to give up these sums to your father, and that was one source of our disagreement; but it was impossible for the heart of a mother to deprive herself of what she could one day share with her children.  And I am glad that I have not done so; for, without such aid, your poor sister would have died of misery, as she did of grief and despair.’

She said more, and seemed to make other confidences to her daughter, but her words were uttered so feebly that they were lost.  She then leaned her head on the shoulder of Sophia, never to raise it more.

Four months after this event, the time of study returned, and Edoardo came again to Padua.  He did not bring the consent of his father to their marriage, but only some distant hopes.  Cadori, who was aware of Sophia’s inclinations, forbade Edoardo to frequent his house, until the formal permission of his father could be procured.  Thus was Sophia deprived of the pleasure of being often near her lover, of enjoying his society, his conversation.  She could see him but seldom, and that unknown to her father.

But Edoardo was changed.  He was no longer the frank, the loving Edoardo of former times.  A residence of five months in Venice, without being subjected to restraint, or having means to elude it; the company of other young men, familiar with vice and dissipation; above all, a fatal inclination had depraved and ruined him!  He had suffered himself to be fascinated by the fierce delight which is found in gaming; play had become his occupation, his chief need.  Play and its effects, the orgies that precede, the excesses that follow, were the life of Edoardo.  Waste and debt were the consequences; and when he had, under a thousand pretences, extorted from his father all the money he could, he began, on arriving in Padua, to apply to Sophia, whom he neglected, at least did not see as often as he might, though he still loved her.  Sophia was as indulgent as he was indiscreet.  At every fatal request for money, she offered him double the sum he had asked.  When Edoardo began to tell her some feigned story, to conceal the shameful source of his wants, and to give her an account of how he had employed those sums, she would not listen to him.

‘Why,’ said she, ’should I demand an account of your actions?  Why should I think over and debate what you have already considered?  Will not all you have be one day mine?  Shall we not be one day man and wife?’ And these words took away from Edoardo every sense of remorse:  conscience ceased to reproach him for the baseness of despoiling that poor girl of the little she possessed.  The thought that he was one day to make her his wife, justified him in his own eyes; for by this he thought he should have recompensed her for all her sacrifices.