She thought for a moment, then answered musingly: "For the present perhaps it would be best. Though," and she laughed, "it would be delightful to see all the other women jealous and envious of my good fortune! Still, if the news were told to any of our friends--who knows?--it might accidentally reach Guido, and--"
"I understand! You may rely upon my discretion. Good-night, contessa!"
"You may call me Nina," she murmured, softly.
"NINA, then," I said, with some effort, as I lightly kissed her. "Good-night!--may your dreams be of me!" She responded to this with a gratified smile, and as I left the room she waved her hand in a parting salute. My diamonds flashed on it like a small circlet of fire; the light shed through the rose-colored lamps that hung from the painted ceiling fell full on her exquisite loveliness, softening it into ethereal radiance and delicacy, and when I strode forth from the house into the night air heavy with the threatening gloom of coming tempest, the picture of that fair face and form flitted before me like a mirage--the glitter of her hair flashed on my vision like little snakes of fire--her lithe hands seemed to beckon me--her lips had left a scorching heat on mine. Distracted with the thoughts that tortured me, I walked on and on for hours. The storm broke at last; the rain poured in torrents, but heedless of wind and weather, I wandered on like a forsaken fugitive. I seemed to be the only human being left alive in a world of wrath and darkness. The rush and roar of the blast, the angry noise of waves breaking hurriedly on the shore, the swirling showers that fell on my defenseless head--all these things were unfelt, unheard by me. There are times in a man's life when mere physical feeling grows numb under the pressure of intense mental agony-when the indignant soul, smarting with the experience of some vile injustice, forgets for a little its narrow and poor house of clay. Some such mood was upon me then, I suppose, for in the very act of walking I was almost unconscious of movement. An awful solitude seemed to encompass me--a silence of my own creating. I fancied that even the angry elements avoided me as I passed; that there was nothing, nothing in all the wide universe but myself and a dark brooding horror called Vengeance. All suddenly, the mists of my mind cleared; I moved no longer in a deaf, blind stupor. A flash of lightning danced vividly before my eyes, followed by a crashing peal of thunder, I saw to what end of a wild journey I had come! Those heavy gates--that undefined stretch of land--those ghostly glimmers of motionless white like spectral mile-stones emerging from the gloom--I knew it all too well--it was the cemetery! I looked through the iron palisades with the feverish interest of one who watches the stage curtain rise on the last scene of a tragedy. The lightning sprung once more across the sky, and showed me for a brief second the distant marble outline of the Romani vault. There the drama began--where would it end? Slowly, slowly there flitted into my thoughts the face of my lost child--the young, serious face as it had looked when the calm, preternaturally wise smile of Death had rested upon it; and then a curious feeling of pity possessed me--pity that her little body should be lying stiffly out there, not in the vault, but under the wet sod, in such a relentless storm of rain. I wanted to take her up from that cold couch--to carry her to some home where there should be light and heat and laughter--to warm her to life again within my arms; and as my brain played with these foolish fancies, slow hot tears forced themselves into my eyes and scalded my cheeks as they fell. These tears relieved me--gradually the tightly strung tension of my nerves relaxed, and I recovered my usual composure by degrees. Turning deliberately away from the beckoning grave-stones, I walked back to the city through the thick of the storm, this time with an assured step and a knowledge of where I was going. I did not reach my hotel till past midnight, but this was not late for Naples, and the curiosity of the fat French hall-porter was not so much excited by the lateness of my arrival as by the disorder of my apparel.