This expectation, this constantly increasing impatience, rendered her
inaccessible to any other feeling, any other thought. He of whom she
did not know even the name, was sent by Paulo, and therefore had
she believed and confided in him from the first. Now had she already
forgotten that she had confided in him on Paulo's account; she believed
in him on his own account, and Paulo had retreated into the background.
Occasionally also the bloody image of poor Carlo presented itself to her
mind, and she secretly reproached herself for having mourned him for
so short a time, for having so soon forgotten that faithful,
self-sacrificing friend.
But even these reproaches were soon silenced when with a throbbing bosom
she thought of this new friend, who like a divinity hovered over her
at an infinite and unattainable distance, and whose mysteriously active
nearness replaced both of those friends she had lost, and for whom she
could no longer mourn.
HE!
"It is now high time!" said Joseph Ribas, one day, as, coming from
Natalie, he entered the boudoir of Count Alexis Orloff. "Now, your
excellency, the right moment has come! You must show yourself, or this
curious child will consume herself with a longing that has changed her
blood to fire! She thinks of nothing but you; with open eyes she dreams
of you, and without the least suspicion that any one is listening to
her, she speaks to you, ah, with what modest tenderness and with what
humble devotion! I tell you, your excellency, you are highly blessed.
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