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CHAPTER XXXIX.
"Have we not loved as none have ever loved?
Shall we not part as none have ever parted?”
Maturin.
Between the future and the soul there is some mysterious sympathy—imperfect and broken in our present state of existence. With fitful gleams of light such foreknowledge had rested on Francesca, when, conscious of coming ill, she knelt, pale and cold, before the altar. But the actual found her more resolved than the fantasy. In the surprise she had sunk again to her knee on Guido's grave. A woman's first impulse is always supplication. She felt, however, that it was in vain; and the blood of her high race, at the approach of danger, mantled in every vein to meet it. A cavalier stepped forward, offering her his hand to rise, and the moonlight fell full on the face of the Duke of Buckingham. His habitual sarcasm found its way. "Had I been aware,"
