“I am glad you say ‘not yet.’  I hope you will take time to consider.  If I can help you, you may command me, Count Nobili.”  And Nera paused and sighed.

“Help me, Nera!—­You can save me!” He started to his feet.  “I am so wretched—­so wounded—­so desperate!”

“Sit down,” she answered, pointing to the sofa.

Mechanically he obeyed.

“You are nothing of all this if you do not marry Enrica Guinigi; if you do, you are all you say.”

“What am I to do?” exclaimed Nobili.  “I have signed the contract.”

“Break it”—­Nera spoke the words boldly out—­“break it, or you will be dishonored.  Do you think you can live in Lucca with a wife that you have bought?”

Nobili bounded from his chair.

“O God!” he said, and clinched his hands.

“You must be calm,” she said, hastily, “or my mother will hear you.”  (All she can do, she thinks, is not worse than Nobili deserves, after that ball.) “Bought!—­Yes.  Will any one believe the marchesa would have given her niece to you otherwise?”

Nobili was pale and silent now.  Nera’s words had called up long trains of thought, opening out into horrible vistas.  There was a dreadful logic about all she said that brought instant conviction with it.  All the blood within him seemed whirling in his brain.

“But Nera, how can I—­in honor—­break this marriage?” he urged.

“Break it! well, by going away.  No one can force you to marry a girl who allowed herself to be hawked about here and there—­offered to Marescotti, and refused—­to others probably.”

“She may not have known it,” said Nobili, roused by her bitter words.

“Oh, folly!  Why come to me, Count Nobili?  You are still in love with her.”

At these words Nobili rose and approached Nera.  Something in her expression checked him; he drew back.  With all her allurements, there was a gulf between them Nobili dared not pass.

“O Nera! do not drive me mad!  Help me, or banish me.”

“I am helping you,” she replied, with what seemed passionate earnestness.  “Have you seen the sonnet?”

“No.”

“If you mean to marry her, do not.  Take advice.  My mother has seen it,” Nera added, with well-simulated horror.  “She would not let me read it.”

Now this was the sheerest malice.  Madame Boccarini had never seen the sonnet.  But if she had, there was not one word in the sonnet that might not have been addressed to the Blessed Virgin herself.

“No, I will not see the sonnet,” said Nobili, firmly.  “Not that I will marry her, but because I do not choose to see the woman I loved befouled.  If it is what you say—­and I believe you implicitly—­let it lie like other dirt, I will not stir it.”

“A generous fellow!” thought Nera.  “How I could have loved him!  But not now, not now.”

“You have been the object of a base fraud,” continued Nera.  Nera would follow to the end artistically; not leave her work half done.