Malipieri’s met them without flinching.

“You mean, of course, that I should offer to marry Donna Sabina,” he said.

“What else could an honourable man do, in your position?”

“I wish I knew.”  Malipieri passed his hand over Ms eyes in evident distress.

“Do you mean to say that you refuse?” the Princess asked, between scorn and anger.  “Are you so little one of us that you suppose this to be a question of inclination?”

Malipieri looked up again.

“I wish it were.  I love your daughter with all my heart and soul.  I did, before I saved her life last night.”

The Princess’s anger gave way to stupefaction.

“Well—­but then?  I do not understand.  There is something else?”

“Yes, there is something else.  I have kept the secret a long time, and it is not all my own.”

“I have a right to know it,” the Princess answered firmly, and bending her brows.

“I never expected to tell it to any one,” Malipieri said, in a low voice, and evidently struggling with himself.  “I see that I shall have to trust you.”

“You must,” insisted the Princess.  “My daughter has a right to know, as well as I; and you say that you love her.”

“I am married.”

“Good heavens!”

She sank back in her chair, overwhelmed with surprise at the simple statement, which, after all, need not have astonished her so much, as she reflected a moment later.  She had never heard of Malipieri until that day, and since he had never told any one of his marriage, it was impossible that her daughter should have known of it.  She was tolerably sure that the latter’s adventure would not be known, but she had formed the determination to take advantage of it in order to secure Malipieri for Sabina, and had been so perfectly sure of the result that she fell from the clouds on learning that he had a wife already.

On his part, he was not thinking of what was passing in her mind, but of what he should have thought of himself, had he, with his character, been in her position.  The bald statement that he was married and his confession of his love for Sabina looked badly side by side, in the clear light of his own honour; all the more, because he knew that, without positively or directly speaking out his heart to the girl, he had let her guess that he was falling in love with her.  He had said so, though in jest, on that night when he had been alone with her in Volterra’s house; his going there, on the mere chance of seeing her alone, and the interest he had shown in her from their first meeting, must have made her think that he was in love.  Moreover, he really was, and like most people who are consciously in love where they ought not to be, he felt as if everybody knew it; and yet he was a married man.

“I am legally married under Italian law,” he said, after a pause.  “But that is all.  My wife bears my name, and lives honourably under it, but that is all there has ever been of marriage in my life.  I can honestly say that not even a word of affection ever passed between us.”