“Oh, Madam!” said Bianca, “now I guess. As you are become his heiress, he is impatient to have you married: he has always been raving for more sons; I warrant he is now impatient for grandsons. As sure as I live, Madam, I shall see you a bride at last.—Good madam, you won’t cast off your faithful Bianca: you won’t put Donna Rosara over me now you are a great Princess.” “My poor Bianca,” said Matilda, “how fast your thoughts amble! I a great princess! What hast thou seen in Manfred’s behaviour since my brother’s death that bespeaks any increase of tenderness to me? No, Bianca; his heart was ever a stranger to me—but he is my father, and I must not complain. Nay, if Heaven shuts my father’s heart against me, it overpays my little merit in the tenderness of my mother—O that dear mother! yes, Bianca, ’tis there I feel the rugged temper of Manfred. I can support his harshness to me with patience; but it wounds my soul when I am witness to his causeless severity towards her.” “Oh! Madam,” said Bianca, “all men use their wives so, when they are weary of them.” “And yet you congratulated me but now,” said Matilda, “when you fancied my father intended to dispose of me!” “I would have you a great Lady,” replied Bianca, “come what will. I do not wish to see you moped in a convent, as you would be if you had your will, and if my Lady, your mother, who knows that a bad husband is better than no husband at all, did not hinder you.—Bless me! what noise is that! St. Nicholas forgive me! I was but in jest.” “It is the wind,” said Matilda, “whistling through the battlements in the tower above: you have heard it a thousand times.” “Nay,” said Bianca, “there was no harm neither in what I said: it is no sin to talk of matrimony—and so, Madam, as I was saying, if my Lord Manfred should offer you a handsome young Prince for a bridegroom, you would drop him a curtsey, and tell him you would rather take the veil?” “Thank Heaven! I am in no such danger,” said Matilda: “you know how many proposals for me he has rejected—” “And you thank him, like a dutiful daughter, do you, Madam? But come, Madam; suppose, to-morrow morning, he was to send for you to the great council chamber, and there you should find at his elbow a lovely young Prince, with large black eyes, a smooth white forehead, and manly curling locks like jet; in short, Madam, a young hero resembling the picture of the good Alfonso in the gallery, which you sit and gaze at for hours together—” “Do not speak lightly of that picture,” interrupted Matilda sighing; “I know the adoration with which I look at that picture is uncommon—but I am not in love with a coloured panel. The character of that virtuous Prince, the veneration with which my mother has inspired me for his memory, the orisons which, I know not why, she has enjoined me to pour forth at his tomb, all have concurred to persuade me that somehow or other my destiny is linked with something relating to him.”