The following day was as gloomy as might have been expected from the evening before. Never had I suffered such inexpressible anguish and distress. It is useless to say that I went to church alone, as on the preceding Sunday, but I was not as calm and recollected as I was then. I was now in a state of irrepressible dissatisfaction with everything and everybody, myself not excepted, and yet I was very far from being in that humble disposition of mind which subdues all murmuring, extinguishes resentment, and throws a calm, serene light on the way one should walk in. I regretted my hastiness of the evening before, because I realized that a different course would have been more likely to further my wishes. In short, I felt I ought to have managed more skilfully, but it never occurred to me I might have been more patient. I found it difficult, above all, to calm the excessive irritation caused by the recollection of Lorenzo’s manner throughout our interview. I compared it with his appearance on the day when he spoke to me for the first time concerning her. What tenderness he then manifested! What confidence! What respect even! Even while uttering her name—alas! with emotion—how manifest it was that, while desirous of repairing his wrongs towards her, he felt incapable of any towards me! Not a week had elapsed since that time, and yesterday how cold, how hard! What implacable and freezing irony! What an incredible change in his looks and words! Was it really Lorenzo who spoke to me in such a way? Was it really he who gave me so indifferent and almost disdainful a look?... No, he was no longer the same. A previous fascination had recovered its power, and the fatal charm over which I had so recently triumphed had regained its empire over a heart which I was, alas! too feeble to retain, because I had no sentiments more profound and elevated than those of nature to aid me! As I have already said, I did not try to fathom Faustina’s motives. I ought, however, to say a few words concerning her, if only through charity for him whom she had followed, like an angel of darkness, to disturb his legitimate happiness! That she had long loved him I do not doubt—loved him with the unbridled passion that sways all such hearts as hers. She thought he would return to her. She believed she was preparing for herself a whole life of happiness by two years of apparent virtue. Mistaken, wounded, and desperate, she had at first yielded to an impetuous desire of perhaps merely seeing him once more; perhaps, also, to avenge herself by destroying the happiness that had defeated her dearest hopes.