“I suspect not; but she will marry him. Pique will often do what affection would fail in. The secret history of the affair is this: There was a youth at Massa, who, while he lived there, made our acquaintance and became even intimate at the Villa: he was a sculptor of some talent, and, as many thought, of considerable promise. I engaged him to give Ida lessons in modelling, and, in this way, they were constantly together. Whether Ida liked him or not I cannot say; but it is beyond a doubt that he loved her. In fact, everything he produced in his art only showed what his mind was full of,--her image was everywhere. This aroused Wahnsdorf's jealousy, and he urged me strongly to dismiss Greppi, and shut my doors to him. At first I consented, for I had a strange sense, not exactly of dislike, but misgiving, of the youth. I had a feeling towards him that if I attempted to convey to you, it would seem as though in all this affair I had suffered myself to be blinded by passion, not guided by reason. There were times that I felt a deep interest in the youth: his genius, his ardor, his very poverty engaged my sympathy; and then, stronger than all these, was a strange, mysterious sense of terror at sight of him, for he was the very image of one who has worked all the evil of my life.” “Was not this a mere fancy?” said the Princess, compassionately, for she saw the shuddering emotion these words had cost her. “It was not alone his look,” continued the Countess, speaking now with impetuous eagerness, “it was not merely his features, but their every play and movement; his gestures when excited; the very voice was _his_. I saw him once excited to violent passion; it was some taunt that Wahnsdorf uttered about men of unknown or ignoble origin; and then He--he himself seemed to stand before me as I have so often seen him, in his terrible outbursts of rage. The sight brought back to me the dreadful recollection of those scenes,--scenes,” said she, looking wildly around her, “that if these old walls could speak, might freeze your heart where you are sitting. “You have heard, but you cannot know, the miserable life we led together; the frantic jealousy that maddened every hour of his existence; how, in all the harmless freedom of our Italian life, he saw causes of suspicion and distrust; how, by his rudeness to this one, his coldness to that, he estranged me from all who have been my dearest intimates and friends, dictating to me the while the custom of a land and a people I had never seen nor wished to see; till at last I was left a mockery to some, an object of pity to others, amidst a society where once I reigned supreme,--and all for a man that I had ceased to love! It was from this same life of misery, unrewarded by the affection by which jealousy sometimes compensates for its tyranny, that I escaped, to attach myself to the fortunes of that unhappy Princess whose lot bore some resemblance to my own.