“Bah!  Good in her—­Well, she’s gone.  She has had her reward, poor soul; and I pity her with all my heart.  But as for the good in her—­ "

“There was good in her, and not a little.  I tell you that if you or any one else could have heard all that passed between us, I should hardly be suspected of having murdered her, poor girl.”

“That is likely enough; but—­”

“Do you know, Manutoli, I have a very strong idea that if this had not happened, the marriage with the Marchese would never have come off?”

“You think that, between us all, we should have induced him to listen to reason?”

“I don’t know about that; I was not thinking of that; I think that Bianca would have been induced to listen to reason; I think that the scheme would have come to nothing through her renunciation of it.”

“When, according to your own account, she had been scheming all the time she has been here to bring it about?” said Manutoli, with arched eyebrows.

“Yes, even so.  She had never known—­how should she?—­that such a marriage would turn me out on the world a beggar; she had never known what sort and what degree of misery and ruin it would bring about to all parties.”

“And you told her this?”

“Yes, in some degree I told her.  As to the effect of such a marriage on myself, I told her simply the entire truth.”

“And you are disposed to think that the Diva—­No, poor girl!  I didn’t mean to speak sneeringly of her.  She has paid for her fault a heavier penalty than it deserved, any way.  You are disposed to think, then, that she would have given up the prize of all her scheming—­this marriage, which was to have given her everything in the world that she could desire, and more than she could have ever dreamed of attaining; she would have voluntarily relinquished all this, you think, for your sake?”

“I’ll tell you what it is, Manutoli.  A man can never appreciate,—­ can never fathom, the depth of woman’s generosity till he has tried it.”

“But, caro mio,—­after all I don’t want to be hard upon her, poor soul, God knows!—­but to expect generosity on such a point from such a woman—­”

“You may say what you will, Manutoli, I know what she was, poor girl, as well as you do—­better, a great deal; for, I tell you, that there was a real generosity in her nature.  Look here,” continued Ludovico; after a pause of a minute or two, “I would not say it to anybody else than you, or to you either, except under circumstances that make one wish to state the whole truth exactly as it was.  It seems so coxcomblike,—­so like what our friend Leandro would say; but I may say it to you.  The fact is, I have a kind of idea that that poor Bianca was inclined to like me.  She cried when I told her--”

“Aha, j’y suis!  Now I begin to be able to fathom the depth of a woman’s generosity.  Given the fact of becoming Marchesa di Castelmare, the lady was not disinclined to become so by catching the nephew instead of the uncle; and small blame to her.”