“Spare me—­spare me, I deserve all; but spare me!  I deserve to suffer, but not at your band,” she cried, in words interrupted by her sobs.

“Spare you what, Bianca?  In truth, I do not understand you,” said the Marchese, genuinely mystified.

“Do you not understand?” she said, turning round on the sofa, so as to face him, and looking into his face with those great appealing eyes suffused with tears; “do you not understand?  Can you not comprehend?  A woman would understand, I think; but I suppose men feel these things differently.”

“Upon my honour, Bianca, I do not know what you mean.  Every word I have spoken to you has been spoken from the very depth of my heart.  I am ready to—­”

“Hush, hush, Marchese!  No more of that; I could not bear it,” she said, with a great sigh that seemed as if it would burst her bosom; “it is very—­very painful to me; but I must endeavour to bring your heart to understand me,—­it must be your heart, Lamber—­your heart, Signor Marchese; for one does not arrive at the understanding of such things with the head.  See, now, I will put myself in the place I deserve to occupy—­in the dust at your feet!  You may trample on me, if you will.  I say I have deserved the shame and the misery I am now suffering.  I deserve them because I have no right to resent the--the—­the proposals which you—­wish to make to me.  I have suffered much from calumny and evil tongues—­much from unhappy circumstances and evil surroundings.  Yet it may be that I-have—­more right to—­ resent—­what—­I have heard from you than you imagine.  But let that pass.  You know—­or think you know—­that I have accepted from others that which I have said I cannot accept from you; and you cannot imagine why this should be so.  Oh, Marchese, does your heart lend you no aid to the understanding of it?  What were those men,—­those empty creatures whose gold could not repay the disgust occasioned by their presence, what were they to me?  Did they love—­pretend even to love—­me?  Did I love them?  Love!  Alas, alas, alas!  Ah, Marchese, a poor girl exposed to the world, as I have been from my cradle upwards, has to suffer much that might well move the pity of a generous heart; but it is nothing—­nothing—­nothing to the tragedy of the misery, the shame, the remorse that comes upon her when at last the day shall come that her heart speaks and shows to her the awful chasm—­the immeasurable gulf that separates such—­I cannot, Lamber—­pardon, I don’t know what I am saying; I cannot go on—­I cannot put it into words!  Do not you—­cannot you understand the difference?”