But alas! in this fairy palace, not unlike that of the Peschieri at
Genoa, the Duchess Cataneo obeyed the edicts of Victorine and the
Paris fashions. She had on a muslin dress and broad straw hat, pretty
shot silk shoes, thread lace stockings that a breath of air would have
blown away; and over her shoulders a black lace shawl. But the thing
which no one could ever understand in Paris, where women are sheathed
in their dresses as a dragon-fly is cased in its annular armor, was
the perfect freedom with which this lovely daughter of Tuscany wore
her French attire; she had Italianized it. A Frenchwoman treats her
shirt with the greatest seriousness; an Italian never thinks about it;
she does not attempt self-protection by some prim glance, for she
knows that she is safe in that of a devoted love, a passion as sacred
and serious in her eyes as in those of others.

At eleven in the forenoon, after a walk, and by the side of a table
still strewn with the remains of an elegant breakfast, the Duchess,
lounging in an easy-chair, left her lover the master of these muslin
draperies, without a frown each time he moved. Emilio, seated at her
side, held one of her hands between his, gazing at her with utter
absorption. Ask not whether they loved; they loved only too well. They
were not reading out of the same book, like Paolo and Francesca; far
from it, Emilio dared not say: "Let us read." The gleam of those eyes,
those glistening gray irises streaked with threads of gold that
started from the centre like rifts of light, giving her gaze a soft,
star-like radiance, thrilled him with nervous rapture that was almost
a spasm. Sometimes the mere sight of the splendid black hair that
crowned the adored head, bound by a simple gold fillet, and falling in
satin tresses on each side of a spacious brow, was enough to give him
a ringing in his ears, the wild tide of the blood rushing through his