meet the eye, have been worse had she refused
Signor Canacci, than it was after she accepted
him.

In that other Florentine home, which we have
now to enter, it might have seemed that Fortune
had been lavish of everything that could, as far
as she was concerned, make the life of its
inmates happy. There were youth, health, wealth,
a noble name, a brilliant position, troops of
friends. Yet " a great match," there also, ruined
all. Jacopo Salviati was assuredly infinitely less
to be pitied for the fate he made for himself, than
poor Caterina. How crawlingly mean an ambition
must it have been, that could have induced
a man so circumstanced to wed a woman he could
never love, for the sake of " a great match" with
a " princess of a reigning house."

The Lady Veronica Cybo was that most
unfortunate and pitiable of all God's creatures, a
woman neither to the eye nor to the mind lovely.
She had not the gift of beauty; nor had she, in
compensation for the deficiency, that spiritual
beauty of heart and mind and temper, which
has often availed to win affection as passionate
as, and more durable than, the conquests of
unaided beauty. Infinitely fortunate for her, and
proportionably disastrous for the other party to
any such bargain, would it have been, if she could
have changed her fate and her identity with
the poorest black-eyed, cherry-cheeked, smiling-
hearted lass, who struggled hard for a modicum
of chesnuts, sufficient to keep body and soul
together, on the mountains of which her father
was sovereign.

There does not appear on the face of the
record any reason for supposing that this unfortunate
princess was in any way a worse woman
than her peers of that day and country. In one
respect she was unquestionably better than the
great majority of them. She sought for no love
save that of her husband. Of course the light-
o'-love dames, who hated her, would have said
that there was small virtue in not seeking that
which was equally unattainable to her at any
price, from either husband or lover.

But the Lady Veronica did very earnestly and
passionately desire the love of her husband.
Poor hapless woman! The bitterest cup that
has ever been mixed for human lips, is surely
that which has to be drained by those in whom a
fatal incapacity for winning love is combined
with a heart ardently athirst for it. Can it be
wondered at, that, under the infliction of such
torture, the moody brow becomes darker, the
acrid temper more aggressive, the unlightsome
spirits more gloomy? The jealousy, transmuting
by its own odious chemistry love to hate, and
seeking to inflict some portion at least of its
own torments on the cause of them, comes to
distort the view, to harden the heart, to exasperate
the mind. And the unlovely and unloved
wife, maddened with these scorpion stings,
becomes absolutely hateful—a torment and a
blister to the man, whose love she would give
her heart's blood to conciliate.

Thus the great match, which the head of the
House of Salviati had made, had the effect of
fatally and finally banishing domestic peace and
happiness from his hearth. But the heaviest
weight of the penalty, by very far, fell on the
party unsinning in the matter. The duke, who
had never loved the woman he had made his
wife, went his own way, heart-whole at least, if
not blest; sought and found such pleasures as
to his taste best supplied the place of happiness;
kept out of his wife's way as much as he could;
deceived her for comparative peace' sake, when it
was possible to do so, and received with careless
recklessness the storm of her lamentations and
reproaches on shoulders weatherproof against
such pelting, when it was not possible.

But the Duca di San Giuliano had become a
changed man, as has been said. Not that the
new passion which engrossed him rendered him
a less assiduous or less admired frequenter of
the court. Jacopo Salviati was still the most
brilliant guest, and the most magnificent host in
Florence. But the ladies found that he was
changed. All that ready abundance of homage
which, assorted in portions ranging in amount
from an exchange of glances to a profession of
eternal devotion, had formed a sort of competitive
prize-fund for the emulation of the fair frail dames
of the courtly circle, suddenly vanished. Bright
eyes languished and obtained no responsive
glances; slender fingers lingered in search of an
expressive pressure, and no pressure was
forthcoming; soft sighs made the lace tremulous on
snowy bosoms, but the peerless duke, so susceptible
a few short months ago to such appeals
to his sensibility, seemed now invulnerable as
adamant. The sad phenomenon was discussed
amid quivering fans and rustling silks, in the
sacred privacy of many a carefully-closed
boudoir. And each Marchesa Giulia or Contessa
Diamante had some gentle pity to bestow on
some rival contessa or marchesa of the set, who
was supposed to be more specially touched to
the quick by this deplorable and unaccountable
defection of the most gay and gallant cavalier in
Tuscany.

What could have come over the noble Salviati?
What was the meaning of it? Could it be a
ridiculously premature and altogether abnormal fit
of devotion? There were such cases on record.
But the whole tenor of the duke's life and bearing
seemed to scout so preposterous an idea.
Salviati was as gay as—nay, if anything, gayer
than—ever. His laugh was as ready and as
joyous as it had ever been, his gait as light, his
smile as frank and radiant. Still, there was one
circumstance which, to some of the younger of the
fair bevy of dames in council, seemed to afford
just grounds of suspicion that the mischief might
be of this nature. La Baronessa Dianora had
learned from her maid, who was particularly
intimate with one of the duke's own men, that his
master had recently become a member of one of
the religious lay confraternities, which existed in
great numbers at that time. The fact of such