Again and again I will repeat, it was all owing to Conny. She had me once securely; she might have kept me for ever. Why hadn’t she answered my letter? One tender sentence would have made me her slave again. Echo not, Eugenio, the remark of Theresa that I had no right to expect a favour of any kind from Conny. An answer to my letter I could claim, not as a favour, but as a right. Two lines would have sufficed me. Yea, my bare address on an envelope would have told me I was not forgotten--that my tender breathings were remembered. Didn’t she know the risk she ran by treating me neglectfully at the time that Theresa was my companion; at the time that a fine, a handsome, and an amiable woman was the sole female society I frequented? You starve your dog, and call him unfaithful, because he takes up his quarters in the house of a neighbour where he is affectionately caressed and plentifully fed! What vile logic is here? Treat me well and I’ll love thee. Answer me my long and amorous letter, and I’ll be true. Hint that thy heart is not insensible to the pleadings of my passion, and I’ll adore. But leave me to quit thee, chewing the airiest cud of unsubstantial hope, suffer me to depart, making no sign, to be absent and illuminate my desolate fancies with no gleam from thy careless heart--What wonder if I am found wanting? What marvel if I discover in eyes as splendid as thine, in hair as abundant though darker, in speech more vivacious, intelligent and characteristic, in manners as womanly, as gentle, as dignified, a magic that leads me from thy altar, oh faithless one, on which no fire burns, to another shrine, whereon it may be my rapture to kindle an inextinguishable flame? CHAPTER II. _Justice._ “Why, you little truant, how durst you wander so far from the house without my leave?” _The Scheming Lieutenant._