Because—­if I did not love her, why was I going?  That is easily answered.  I was going because I suspected that all was not well with her.  Why was Donna Giulia in retirement?  Why was the villa at the disposition of the learned judge?  Why was Sir John Macartney so guarded in his admissions, and why so desirous that I should not see Count Giraldi?  Apart from my private grievance against that person, which, after all, was only based on surmise and the convictions of Virginia, I could see no possible reason why I should not meet him, but one.  That was, that he was fallen a victim to Aurelia’s charms.  And to a certain extent I felt that I should be responsible for that misfortune, for if I had never loved her she had never been in Florence; and if she had never been in Florence, she had never seen this accomplished, scoffing, cynical Tuscan.

I was not ashamed to confess that I still thought Aurelia the most beautiful woman in the world, the most heavenly in conversation as in person the most superb.  All the old glamour was upon me still.  I knew that I should be a child at her knees the moment I set eyes upon her again; I knew that I should be imparadised, longing after impossible goodness, filled with impossible joys.  But I knew also that I did not desire her.  She was sacred, she was so little of the earth that as well might one hope to wed a seraph, all compact of fire, as she.  I set by her, in my mind’s eye, that passionate Virginia—­that faithful, clinging, serving mate of what I knew were my happiest days.  Ah, my sweet, lovely, loving wife!  Virginia’s long kisses, Virginia’s close arms, her beating bosom, her fury of love, the meekness, obedience, steadfastness into which it could all be changed at a mere lift of my brows—­ah, nuptial love, wedded bliss, the joys of home and the hearth, English joys!  Virginia meant all this and more to me.  I swore to myself that without her I could not live, that to deserve her I would renounce the world, my patrimony, my country, and that not even a changed Aurelia—­changed from Seraph to calling Siren—­could keep me from her side.

But Aurelia—­Aurelia Gualandi, that delicate flower of Siena, that youngest of the angels, that fount of poesy—­what of her?  What had she to say to such a certainty as this of mine?  In my mind’s eye I saw them stand together, she and Virginia, those two beautiful girls, Virginia a head the taller, proudly erect, with arms folded over her chest, and her dark brows forming a bar across her forehead.  I saw her in white bodice and green petticoat, her arms and neck bare, her feet in old slippers, her black hair loosely coiled and stuck with a silver pin.  I saw her hold herself aloof and dubious, proud and coldly chaste.  “Call me and I come,” she seemed to say to me between her shut lips, “Call me and I follow you over the world like a dog at your heels.  Send me into infamy and I go; expect me to woo you there and I will die sooner.  Yours, if you will have me; nobody’s, anybody’s, if you will not!” In my fancy I could hear her very words, see her steady eyes, her pure and moving lips.