What must have followed
had she not chanced on Odo, she had clearly neither the courage nor the
experience to picture; but she seemed to have had some confused idea of
throwing herself on the mercy of the foreign nobleman she believed she
was to meet.
So much Odo had gathered; and her voice, her gesture, the disorder of
her spirit, supplied what her words omitted. Not for a moment, either in
listening to her or in the soberer period of revision, did he question
the exact truth of her narrative. It was the second time that they had
met under strange circumstances; yet now as before the sense of her
candour was his ruling thought. He concluded that, whatever plight she
found herself in, she would be its immediate justification; and felt
sure he must have reached this conclusion though love had not had a
stake in the verdict. This perhaps but proved him the more deeply taken;
for it is when passion tightens the net that reason flaps her wings most
loudly.
Day was high when he returned to his lodgings, impatient for a word from
Fulvia. None had come; and as the hours passed he yielded to the most
disheartening fancies. His wretchedness was increased by the thought
that he had once inflicted on her such suspense he was now enduring; and
he went so far as to wonder if this were her revenge for Vercelli. But
if the past was intolerable to consider the future was all baffling
fears. His immediate study was how to see her; and this her continued
silence seemed to refuse him.
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