Walking as in a dream he brushed past the astonished and
frightened servant unseeingly, and went out of the house into the
street once more. There he paused dizzily,--the stars appeared to
rock in the sky, and the houses seemed moving slowly round him in a
sort of circular procession. The shouting of the newsvendors which
had ceased for a while, began again with even louder persistency.
"Morte di Angela Sovrani!"
"La bella Sovrani!--Assassinamento crudele!"
The old man's heart beat in strong hammer-strokes,--he listened
vaguely,--his tall figure shaking a little with the storm pent-up
within him, till all at once as if the full realization of the
position had only just burst upon him, he uttered a sharp cry--
"Her lover! Her promised husband! One whom she trusted and loved
more than her own father! The hope of her life!--the man whose
praise was sweeter to her than the plaudits of the whole world!--he-
-even he--her MURDERER! For even if she lives in body, he has
murdered her soul!"
He looked up at the deep starlit heavens, his dark face growing
livid in the intensity of his wrath and pain.
"May God curse him!" he whispered thickly--"May all evil track his
footsteps, and the terrors of a cursed conscience hound him to his
death! May he never know peace by day or night!--may the devils in
his own soul destroy him! God curse him!"
He clenched his fist and raised it threateningly,--and gathering his
cloak about him tried to walk on,--but there was a black mist before
his eyes .
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