Captain Mansana and Mothers Hands | Page 9

a lovely girl of eighteen. Possibly she had
been tempted by the general's fortune, which was very large, especially
as she had lived in her ancestral palace in a condition of absolute
poverty. It is a state of affairs common enough in Italy, where the
family palace is often held as mere trust-property by the occupant, who
has no sufficient revenue provided out of the estate to keep it in proper
order. This was the case in the present instance. Still there may have
been some other attraction in the general besides his wealth; for when
he died, shortly after his daughter's birth, his widow went into complete
retirement. She was never seen, except at church, and by the priests.
The friends, who had broken with her at the time of her marriage, but
who now showed themselves extremely willing to renew their
acquaintance with the rich and beautiful young widow, she kept
steadily at a distance.
Meanwhile Ancona became Italian, and the Austrian general's widow,
ill at ease amid the festivities, the illuminations, and the patriotic
celebrations of her native town, quitted it and settled in Rome, leaving
her empty palace and her deserted villa and grounds to offer their silent
protest. But once settled in Rome the Princess Leaney laid aside the
black veil, which she had always worn since her husband's death, threw
open her salons, where all the leaders of the Papal aristocracy were to
be seen, and annually contributed large sums to the Peter's pence and
other ecclesiastical funds. These actions--the first as well as the
last--accentuated the feeling against her in Ancona, and thanks to the
efforts of the agents of the "Liberal" party, the sentiment found its echo
in Rome. Of this she was herself quite aware; and indeed, when she
drove out on Monte Pincio, in all her beauty and elegance, with her
little daughter by her side, she could not fail to notice the hostile
glances levelled at her by persons she recognised as inhabitants of her
native town, as well as by others who were strangers to her. But this
only roused in her a spirit of defiance; she continued to show herself

regularly on Monte Pincio, and she again returned to Ancona when the
summer exodus from Rome set in. Once more she opened her palace as
well as her villa, and passed most of her time in the latter residence in
order to enjoy the sea-bathing. Though she was obliged to drive
through the town to her house in the Corso, or to church, without
exchanging greetings with a single human being, she persisted in taking
this drive daily. When her daughter grew older, she allowed her to be
present at the performances of plays and tableaux vivants at the evening
parties, which the priests promoted under the patronage of the Bishop,
in order to assist the collection of Peter's pence in Ancona; and so great
was the beauty of the daughter, and the attractions of the mother, that
many people would go to these entertainments who otherwise would
certainly not have been seen there. As was natural, the girl caught her
mother's proud spirit of defiance, and when, at the age of fourteen, she
was left motherless, this spirit developed further, with such additions as
youth and high courage would be likely to suggest. Rumour soon began
to play with her name, more freely and more critically than even it had
done with that of her mother, and her reputation extended over a wider
area; for with an elderly lady as chaperon--a stiff, decorous person,
admirably adapted for the office, who saw everything and said
nothing--she travelled a good deal in foreign countries, from England
to Egypt. But she so arranged her movements that she always contrived
to spend the summer in Ancona and the autumn in Rome.
In due course the latter town, like the former, had become Italian; but in
Rome, as well as in Ancona, she continued to display a kind of proud
contempt for the governing faction, and particularly for those members
of it who tried, by every possible artifice, to gain the heart of a lady at
once so rich and so handsome. It was rumoured, indeed, that some of
the younger noblemen had entered into a sort of agreement to either
conquer her or crush her; and whether there was any truth in the story
or not, she certainly believed in it herself. The revenge she took upon
those whom she suspected of designs upon her was to bring them to her
feet by her fascinations, and then to repulse them scornfully; to render
them frantic, first with hope, afterwards with disappointment. When
she appeared on the Corso and Monte Pincio, driving her own horses, it
was in a sort of triumphal