“From you?” A smile flashed through her tears. “Alas, yes.” She drew back and hid her face again, as though overcome by a fresh wave of shame.
Tony glanced about him. “If I could wrench a bar out of that window—” he muttered.
“Impossible! The court is guarded. You are a prisoner, alas.— Oh, I must speak!” She sprang up and paced the room. “But indeed you can scarce think worse of me than you do already—”
“I think ill of you?”
“Alas, you must! To be unwilling to marry the man my father has chosen for me—”
“Such a beetle-browed lout! It would be a burning shame if you married him.”
“Ah, you come from a free country. Here a girl is allowed no choice.”
“It is infamous, I say—infamous!”
“No, no—I ought to have resigned myself, like so many others.”
“Resigned yourself to that brute! Impossible!”
“He has a dreadful name for violence—his gondolier has told my little maid such tales of him! But why do I talk of myself, when it is of you I should be thinking?”
“Of me, poor child?” cried Tony, losing his head.
“Yes, and how to save you—for I can save you! But every moment counts—and yet what I have to say is so dreadful.”
“Nothing from your lips could seem dreadful.”
“Ah, if he had had your way of speaking!”
“Well, now at least you are free of him,” said Tony, a little wildly; but at this she stood up and bent a grave look on him.
“No, I am not free,” she said; “but you are, if you will do as I tell you.”
Tony, at this, felt a sudden dizziness; as though, from a mad flight through clouds and darkness, he had dropped to safety again, and the fall had stunned him.
“What am I to do?” he said.
“Look away from me, or I can never tell you.”
He thought at first that this was a jest, but her eyes commanded him, and reluctantly he walked away and leaned in the embrasure of the window. She stood in the middle of the room, and as soon as his back was turned she began to speak in a quick monotonous voice, as though she were reciting a lesson.
“You must know that the Marquess Zanipolo, though a great noble, is not a rich man. True, he has large estates, but he is a desperate spendthrift and gambler, and would sell his soul for a round sum of ready money.—If you turn round I shall not go on!— He wrangled horribly with my father over my dowry—he wanted me to have more than either of my sisters, though one married a Procurator and the other a grandee of Spain. But my father is a gambler too—oh, such fortunes as are squandered over the arcade yonder! And so—and so—don’t turn, I implore you—oh, do you begin to see my meaning?”
She broke off sobbing, and it took all his strength to keep his eyes from her.
“Go on,” he said.
“Will you not understand? Oh, I would say anything to save you! You don’t know us Venetians—we’re all to be bought for a price. It is not only the brides who are marketable—sometimes the husbands sell themselves too. And they think you rich—my father does, and the others—I don’t know why, unless you have shown your money too freely—and the English are all rich, are they not? And—oh, oh—do you understand? Oh, I can’t bear your eyes!”
She dropped into a chair, her head on her arms, and Tony in a flash was at her side.
“My poor child, my poor Polixena!” he cried, and wept and clasped her.
“You are rich, are you not? You would promise them a ransom?” she persisted.
“To enable you to marry the Marquess?”
“To enable you to escape from this place. Oh, I hope I may never see your face again.” She fell to weeping once more, and he drew away and paced the floor in a fever.
Presently she sprang up with a fresh air of resolution, and pointed to a clock against the wall. “The hour is nearly over. It is quite true that my father is gone to fetch his chaplain. Oh, I implore you, be warned by me! There is no other way of escape.”