Enrica’s eyes wandered over the address, “To the Noble Signorina Enrica Guinigi, Corellia,” as if each word had been some wonder.  She dwelt upon every crooked line and twist, each tail and flourish, that Nobili’s hand had traced.  She pressed the letter to her lips, then laid it upon her lap and gazed at it, eking out every second of suspense to its utmost limit.  Suddenly a burning curiosity possessed her to know when he would come.  With a gasp that almost stopped her breath she tore the cover open.  The paper shook so violently in her unsteady hand that the lines seemed to run up and down and dance.  She could distinguish nothing.  She pressed her hand to her forehead, steadied herself, then read: 

ENRICA:  When this comes to you I am gone from you forever.  You have betrayed me—­how much I do not care to know.  Perhaps I think you less guilty than you are.  Of all women, my heart clung to you.  I loved you as men only love once in their lives.  For the sake of that love, I will still screen you all I can.  But it is known in Lucca that Count Marescotti was your accepted lover when you promised yourself to me.  Also, that Count Marescotti refused to marry you when you were offered by the Marchesa Guinigi.  From this knowledge I cannot screen you.  God is my witness, I go, not desiring by my presence or my words to reproach you further.  But, as a man who prizes the honor of his house and home, I cannot marry you.  Tell the marchesa I shall keep my word to her, although I break the marriage-contract.  She will find the money placed as she desired.

MARIO NOBILI.

“PALAZZO NOBILI, LUCCA.”

Little by little Enrica read the whole, sentence by sentence.  At first the full horror of the words was veiled.  They came to her in a dazed, stupid way.  A mist gathered about her.  There was a buzzing in her ears that deadened her brain.  She forced herself to read over the letter again.  Then her heart stood still with terror—­her cheeks burned—­her head reeled.  A deadly cold came over her.  Of all within that letter she understood nothing but the words, “I am gone from you forever.”  Gone!—­Nobili gone!  Never to speak to her again in that sweet voice!—­never to press his lips to hers!—­never to gather her to him in those firm, strong arms!  O God! then she must die!  If Nobili were gone, she must die!  A terrible pang shot through her; then a great calmness came over her, and she was very still.  “Die!—­yes—­why not?—­Die!”

Clutching the letter in her icy hand, Enrica looked round with pale, tremulous eyes, from which the light has faded.  It could not be the same world of an hour ago.  Death had come into it—­she is about to die.  Yet the sun shone fiercely upon her face as she turned it upward and struck upon her eyes.  The children laughed over the chestnuts spluttering in the ashes.  Pipa sang merrily above at the open window.  A bird—­was it a raven?—­poised itself in the air; the cattle grazed peacefully on the green slopes of the opposite mountain, and a drove of pigs ran downward to drink at a little pool.  She alone has changed.