Copyright, By B. The speaker was a young girl not more than eighteen years of age. As she spoke, the flashing of her eyes and her clenched hands betokened the intensity of her feelings. The person to whom the words were addressed was a man of about forty.
He was smooth-shaven, and the black, shaggy eyebrows which met above the bridge of his nose, gave to his face a stern and almost forbidding expression. He was dead when found, stabbed to the heart, as you told me, by Manuel Della Cosciaβthat brave Corsican who ran away to escape the vengeance he so well deserved. The man looked up approvingly.
If you loved your father, as your words seem to indicate, I do not see how you can disobey his slightest wish. The girl turned upon him, that bright flash again in her eyes. Why is it that you yourself do not marry? You have something tangible to remember; I can only love his memory. I was but a child a few days old when he fell beneath the knife of the assassin. I do love his memory, and I know if he were living he would not condemn me to a loveless marriage.
He shrugged his shoulders and the dark line of eyebrows lifted perceptibly. The man started. The question was asked with such vehemence that for an instant his marked self-possession was overcome. The Count is dead, or there would be a living witness to the compact. The words of the dead cannot be changed. It is to you I have always looked for adviceβboth Julien and I, for you are so much older and wiser than we are.
Pascal Batistelli set his teeth tightly together, a dark look came into his face. She turned away from the table, walked to the window, and looked out upon the grounds which stretched far and wide from the castle walls.
