No sooner were these daring words uttered, than the cavaliere positively trembled.  The marchesa listened to them in ominous silence.  Such a possibility had never presented itself for a instant to her imagination.  She turned slowly round, pressed her hands tightly on her knees, and darkly eyed him.

“You think that I should consent to such a marriage?” she asked in a deep voice, a mocking smile upon her lips.

“I think, marchesa, that you should sacrifice every thing—­yes—­every thing.”  And Trenta, feeling himself on safe ground, repeated the word with an audacity that would have surprised those who only knew him in the polite details of ordinary life.  “I think that you should sacrifice every thing to the interests of your house.”

This was hitting the marchesa home.  She felt it and winced; but her resolution was unshaken.

“Did I not know that you are descended from a line as ancient, though not so illustrious as my own, I should think I was listening to a Jew peddler of Leghorn,” she replied, with insolent cynicism.

The cavaliere felt deeply offended, but had the presence of mind to affect a smile, as though what she had said was an excellent joke.

“Nobili shall never mix his blood with the Guinigi—­I swear it!  Rather let our name die out from the land.”

She raised both her hands in the twilight to ratify the imprecation she had hurled upon her race.  Her voice died away into the corner of the darkening room; her thoughts wandered.  She sat in spirit upon the seigneurial throne, below, in the presence-chamber.  Should Nobili sit there, on that hallowed seat of her ancestors?—­the old Lombard palace call him master, living—­gather his bones with their ashes, dead?—­Never!  Better far moulder into ruin as they had mouldered.  Had she not already permitted herself to be too much influenced?  She had offered Enrica in marriage to Count Marescotti, and he had refused her—­refused her niece!

Suddenly she shook off the incubus of these thoughts and turned toward Trenta.  He had been watching her anxiously.

“I can never forgive Enrica,” she said.  “She may not have disgraced herself—­that matters little—­but she has disgraced me.  She must enter a convent; until then I will allow her to remain in my house.”

“Exactly,” burst in Trenta, again betrayed into undue warmth by this concession.

The cavaliere was old; he had seen that life revolves itself strangely in a circle, from which we may diverge, but from which we seldom disentangle ourselves.  Desperate resolves are taken, tragedies are planned, but Fate or Providence intervenes.  The old balance pendulates again—­the foot falls into the familiar step.  Death comes to cut the Gordian knot.  The grave-sod covers all that is left, and the worm feeds on the busy brain.

As a man of the world, Trenta was a profound believer in the chapter of accidents.