A Siren | Page 7

sheltered harbour in which that placid life had been led.
And yet that storm-wind did not produce the same effect, as it would
have produced, and is seen to produce every day on the strong, wide-
spread canvas of some young navigator on the ocean of life, putting out
into the open waters at the time when such storms are frequent. Every
day we see such craft scudding with all sails spread before the blast
without attempt at reefing or tacking. Right ahead they drive before the
wind with no doubtful course. But it was not and could not be so in the

case of the Marchese Lamberto. The whole habits of a life--the ways,
notions, hopes, desires, ambitions, that time had made into a part of the
nature of the man; the passions, which though calm and unviolent in
their nature, had become strong, not by forcible energy, but by the deep
and unconscious sinking of their roots into the depths of his
character--all these things opposed a resistance to the new and
suddenly-loosed passion-wind, such as that which the deep-rooted oak
opposes to the tempest with no result of conquering it, only with the
result of causing its own leaves and branches to be buffeted to and fro,
torn, broken, and wrecked.
Thus it was that the unhappy Marchese was violently driven to and fro
from hour to hour between the extremities of love and hate, till his
brain reeled in the terrible conflict; and alternate attraction and
repulsion bandied his soul backwards and forwards between them.
A ball-room is not a pleasant exercise-ground for a jealous man who
does not dance. No "bolgia" of the hell invented by the sombre
imagination of the great poet could have surpassed, in torment, the
Circolo ball-room on that last Carnival night to the Marchese
Lamberto.
The sight of the sorceress who had bewitched him, as he watched her in
the dance, had once again scattered to the winds all resolution, all hope
of the possibility of escaping from the toils. What was all else that he
desired to be put in comparison with that raging, craving desire that he
felt and sickened with for her? That was what he really wanted--what
he must have or die. It was madness to see her, as he saw her then, in
the arms of other men, laughing, sparkling, brilliant with animation and
enjoyment. Worst hell of all to see her thus with his nephew, her
admiration for whom she had frankly confessed; whose ways with
women he knew, and whose intimacy with Bianca had already become
suspicious to him.
Yet not the less did he stand and gaze, as they danced together, clearly
the handsomest and best-matched couple in the room--matched so
admirably evidently by design and forethought.

He had seen Ludovico and Bianca leave the ball-room, after the last
dance, together with the crowd of most of those who had been joining
in it, and had begun fluttering, poor moth, after the irresistible
attraction, to follow them towards the supper-room. Missing sight of
them in the throng for a minute, he had followed on to the principal
supper-room, and not finding them there (for the reason the reader wots
of) had returned on his steps, and was sitting on the end of a divan, by
the door of the next room to the ball-room, through which all had to
pass who wished to go thence to the supper-room. There were people
passing through the centre of the room from door to door; but there was
no other, save the Marchese, sitting down in it.
There the Conte Leandro found him, and came and sat down by his side;
much, at first, to the Marchese's annoyance.
"What! you not in the supper-room, Signor Leandro. I thought your
place was always there?" said the Marchese.
"I'm no greater a supper-eater than another; let them say what they
please. But I have just been getting a glass of wine and a biscuit in the
little supper-room at the further end there."
"What, are there two supper-rooms? I did not know that!"
"Only a buffet in the little room at the end, where the papers generally
are. It was mainly Ludovico's doing,--in order to have less crowd in the
supper-room,--and perhaps to have a quiet place for a tete-a-tete supper
himself. Oh! I knew better than not to clear out, when he and La Diva
Bianca came in; specially as there was nobody else there. Faith! I left
them there alone together."
"Oh! that's where he is supping, then?" said the Marchese, in the most
unconcerned tone he could manage.
"Yes; supping,--or enjoying himself in some other way, quite as
delightful. The fact is, Signor Marchese," continued the poet, in a
lowered voice, and rapidly glancing around to