But our heroine chose to imagine him uneducated, and not sufficiently _spirituel_. She observed that after dinner he felt inclined to take a siesta.—Her old failing of despising a devoted heart, came back in full force. Was she not beautiful?—had she not been adored by Melville and others? She might look higher—if not as to birth, at least as regards intellect. She was not content with plain common sense in a husband, united with the artistic taste innate in most of the children of beautiful Italy. She did not at that time appreciate the inestimable bliss of tranquil domestic life. She would shine, she would be somebody in the world—the wife of a Cabinet Minister, of a great general, an orator, a poet. She desired to queen it, in society; she was in truth a worldling at heart, a very slave to the pomps and vanities of life—not perhaps for their own intrinsic merit, but as a means of gratifying those ambitious desires, which as a vulture devoured every good feeling of her nature. But God, as a tender Father, who chastises but to bless, was leading her in His own way, and preparing for her unwilling feet, a path so steep and thorny, that could the future have been at that time disclosed to her, she would have shrunk back appalled from its dreariness, and have clung with the tenacious grasp of despair to this her last hope of happiness on earth. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XIV. +I PROMESSI SPOSI+ “AND so, _bella mia_, I may at last be permitted to congratulate you on your engagement to the Duc di Balzano. If I understand aright, he will very shortly place a coronet on the fair brow he so much admires—is it not so?” “Not exactly, Mary,” said Evelyn, looking up from a sketch she was making. “You know, dear, that Balzano has himself placed a serious impediment in the way of our marriage. He insists on my becoming a Catholic.” “I am perfectly aware of that, Evelyn,” I answered, “but I thought you were well disposed toward the faith of Rome, and that your present sojourn in this city was with a view to studying the dogmas of the Catholic Church.” “Precisely so, Mary—and for that reason also, Balzano has presented to us the chaplain of His Holiness, Monsignore Dormer, for whose spiritual counsel I am sincerely thankful. Yet I cannot force my conscience, nor be converted against my convictions.” “Pardon me,” I rejoined, “but have you not done wrong in raising hopes which may never be realized?” “Really,” replied she, “if the gentleman himself makes these conditions, I do not see how any blame can possibly attach to me.”