To describe the scene that ensued would be difficult. The shock to the young wife’s feelings had been very great. That her husband was faithless to her, not only in deed but in heart, she doubted not. It was in vain he endeavored to explain all; she listened to him not. She thought he was uttering falsehoods, which but increased his treachery. Gina had once spoken of her fierce jealousy, but what was hers compared with the Lady Adelaide’s? In the midst of her explosions of passion, Lucrezia, who had either not received, or misunderstood, her lady’s message by Gina, entered. The maiden stood aghast, till, admonished by a haughty wave of the hand from the count, she hastened from the room. Later in the day, the Lord of Visinara quitted the castle, to pay the promised visit. His wife refused to go. "Mercy! mercy!" she exclaimed, in anguish, as she sat alone in her apartments, "to be thus requited by Giovanni—whom I so loved, my husband! my own husband! Is it possible that a man can be guilty of treachery so deep? Would that I had died ere I had known his faithlessness, or ever seen him! Shame—shame upon it! to introduce his paramour into my very presence; an attendant on my person! Holy Virgin, that I should be so degraded! Sure a wife, young and beautiful, was never treated as I have been. Lowered in the eyes of my own servants; insulted by him who ought to have guarded me from insult; laughed at—ridiculed by _her_! Oh! terrible! terrible!" As she spoke the last words, she rose, and unlocking the bright green cabinet, that of malachite marble already spoken of, took from thence a small bag of silver gilt. Touching the secret spring of this, she drew forth a letter, opened, and read it: "_’To the Lady Adelaide, Countess of Visinara._ "’You fancy yourself the beloved of Giovanni. Count of Visinara; but retire not to your rest this night, lady, in any such vain imagining. The heart of the count has long been given to another; and, you know, by your love for him, that such passion can never change its object. Had he met you in earlier life, it might have been otherwise. He marries you, for your lineage is a high one; and she, in the world’s eye and in that of his own haughty race, was no fit mate for him." "Ay," she shuddered, "it is explained now. So, Gina Montani was this beloved one. I am his by sufferance—she, by love. Holy Mother, have mercy on my brain! I _know_ they love—I see it all too plainly. And I could believe his deceitful explanation, and trust him. I _told_ him I believed it on our wedding night. _He did not know why he went to her house; habit, he supposed, or, want of occupation._ Oh, shame on his false words! Shame on my own credulity!" None of us forget the stanzas in Collins’s Ode to the Passions: