In vain he had remonstrated, in vain had he used authority. He found her now, as he had left her in Rome, lighter than vanity itself. That accident, propinquity, and some interest in the accident she had brought upon him, with the vanity of winning one who had been considered cold and immovable, had induced her to give him what little love she could bestow on any one, and confirm it with her hand, he had long known. Long, too, had he repented of his rash marriage; but that carelessness of all things, that weariness of the world, that longing for repose, even were it the repose of the grave, which Leonora's fancied fickleness had brought upon him, had not been removed by his union with Eloise de Chaumont. A thousand evils had been added--evils the more terrible to a proud, high mind. He had never expected much; but he had believed Eloise innocent, though thoughtless; tender and affectionate, though light. But he had not found the tenderness after the ring was on her finger; and the very semblance of affection had soon died away. "What was there on earth worth living for?" he asked himself; "what was there to compensate the pangs he endured--the burthen he bore. Nothing--nothing. Life was only not a blank because it was full of miseries." Thus he sat, with a wrung heart and whirling brain, for nearly half an hour. At length he took a picture from his bosom--one of those small gems of art which the great painters of that and the preceding age sometimes took a pride in producing--and gazed upon it earnestly. It was the portrait of a very beautiful woman (his own mother), which the reader has seen him receive from Milan. He thought it like Leonora d'Orco; but oh! that mother was faithful and true unto the death. She had defended her own honour, she had protected herself from shame, she had escaped the power of a tyrant, by preferring the grave to pollution. He turned to the back of the picture, now repaired, and read the inscription on it, "A cure for the ills of life." "And why not my cure?" asked Lorenzo of his own heart; "why should I not pass from misery and shame even as my mother did?" He pressed the spring, and the lid flew open. There were the fatal powders beneath, all ready to his hand. He was seated in his wife's room, and among many an article of costly luxury on the table were a small silver cup and water-pitcher. Lorenzo stretched out his hand to take the cup, laying the portrait with the powders down while he half filled the cup with water. But, ere he could take a powder from the case, Antonio re-entered. "The hour has passed, my lord, and I do hope you will now hear me," he said. "I have to tell you that which, perhaps, may be of little comfort, but is yet important for you to know."