The Marchese might have been seen, had anybody been observing him closely at the moment, to turn visibly paler as her carriage approached his. As far as any clear thought had been in his mind, or any power of thinking possible to him, his latest idea in reference to her had been a desperate resolve that he would never speak to her again. And now, again, as he saw her, in a new avatar of loveliness, he once again knew that to keep such a resolution was above his power. What he had to do at the moment was to be done, in any case, with the best grace he might. Taking the huge mass of skilfully-arranged flowers in both hands, as her carriage came opposite to his, he leaned out as far as he could, and Quinto Lalli, who sat on the side nearest to him, stretched out to meet him, and then handed the offering to the Goddess. She smiled brilliantly and bowed low, sending a coquettish, sidelong glance of private thanks under eyelashes as she bent her graceful neck. The carriages rolled on, and passed each other; and there rushed into the Marchese's head a sudden pulse of blood, which turned his previous pallor into a dusky crimson, and seemed to make all the scene swim before his eyes. Partly to hide the evidences of the emotion of which he was conscious, and partly because he felt as if he needed the support, he threw himself back into the corner of the carriage, turning himself away from the scene in front of it as though to shelter his face from the sun that was then so low in the sky as to begin to throw its slanting rays under the hoods of the carriages. This position, as it chanced, brought the Marchese's eye to bear on the little glass window made in the back of the hood of the carriage, after the old-fashioned manner of coach-building. And what he saw through the little window was this. A something--a white paper packet, it looked like--was in the act of being thrown to the Diva's carriage from that immediately behind his own, in which, it will be remembered, were his nephew and the Conte Leandro; and the Goddess herself was leaning far out of her carriage in the act of throwing a bouquet to the Marchese Ludovico: The Marchese Lamberto also saw the magnificent flowers he had himself just given to Bianca roll from her carriage on to the pavement,--an accident caused by the movement of her person as she leaned forward to throw her flowers to the other carriage. With what an added torment to the hell that raged within him the unfortunate Marchese returned from that miserable Corso to his palazzo, may be well imagined. Nevertheless, there had been as little meaning in what he had seen as there often is in many things that make the madness of a jealous man's jealousy.