reasonable to suppose that the two had left the room in order to
consult in secret upon the question of waiting for Volterra. But
Sabina did not meet his look, and her pale young face was impenetrably
calm, for she was thinking about what she had just discovered. She was
as certain that she knew what had passed in the Baroness's thoughts,
as if the latter had spoken aloud. The knowledge, for it amounted to
that, momentarily chased away the recollection of what Malipieri had
said.

It was rather amusing to be looked upon as marriageable, and to a man
she already knew. Her mother had often talked to her with cynical
frankness, telling her that she was to make the best match that could
be obtained for her, naming numbers of young men she had never seen
and assuring her that likes and dislikes had nothing to do with
matrimony. They came afterwards, the Princess said, and it generally
pleased Providence to send a mild form of aversion as the permanent
condition of the bond. But Sabina had never believed her mother, who
had cheated her when she was a child, as many foolish and heartless
women do, promising rewards which were never given, and excursions
which were always put off and little joys which always turned to
sorrows less little by far.

Moreover, her sister Clementina had told her that there was only one
way to treat the world, and that was to leave it with the contempt it
deserved; and she had heard her brother tell his wife in one of his
miserable fits of weakly brutal anger that marriage was hell, and
nothing else; to which the young princess had coldly replied that he
was only where he deserved to be. Sabina had not been brought up with
the traditional pious and proper views about matrimony, and if she did
not think even worse of it, the merit was due to her own nature, in