The young Princess wearied herself in conjectures on the flight of Isabella, and on the threats of Manfred to her mother. “But what business could he have so urgent with the chaplain?” said Matilda, “Does he intend to have my brother’s body interred privately in the chapel?”
“Oh, Madam!” said Bianca, “now I guess. As you are become his heiress, he is impatient to have you married: he has always been raving for more sons; I warrant he is now impatient for grandsons. As sure as I live, Madam, I shall see you a bride at last.—Good madam, you won’t cast off your faithful Bianca: you won’t put Donna Rosara over me now you are a great Princess.”
“My poor Bianca,” said Matilda, “how fast your thoughts amble! I a great princess! What hast thou seen in Manfred’s behaviour since my brother’s death that bespeaks any increase of tenderness to me? No, Bianca; his heart was ever a stranger to me—but he is my father, and I must not complain. Nay, if Heaven shuts my father’s heart against me, it overpays my little merit in the tenderness of my mother—O that dear mother! yes, Bianca, ’tis there I feel the rugged temper of Manfred. I can support his harshness to me with patience; but it wounds my soul when I am witness to his causeless severity towards her.”
“Oh! Madam,” said Bianca, “all men use their wives so, when they are weary of them.”
“And yet you congratulated me but now,” said Matilda, “when you fancied my father intended to dispose of me!”
“I would have you a great Lady,” replied Bianca, “come what will. I do not wish to see you moped in a convent, as you would be if you had your will, and if my Lady, your mother, who knows that a bad husband is better than no husband at all, did not hinder you.—Bless me! what noise is that! St. Nicholas forgive me! I was but in jest.”
“It is the wind,” said Matilda, “whistling through the battlements in the tower above: you have heard it a thousand times.”
“Nay,” said Bianca, “there was no harm neither in what I said: it is no sin to talk of matrimony—and so, Madam, as I was saying, if my Lord Manfred should offer you a handsome young Prince for a bridegroom, you would drop him a curtsey, and tell him you would rather take the veil?”
“Thank Heaven! I am in no such danger,” said Matilda: “you know how many proposals for me he has rejected—”
“And you thank him, like a dutiful daughter, do you, Madam? But come, Madam; suppose, tomorrow morning, he was to send for you to the great council chamber, and there you should find at his elbow a lovely young Prince, with large black eyes, a smooth white forehead, and manly curling locks like jet; in short, Madam, a young hero resembling the picture of the good Alfonso in the gallery, which you sit and gaze at for hours together—”
“Do not speak lightly of that picture,” interrupted Matilda sighing; “I know the adoration with which I look at that picture is uncommon—but I am not in love with a coloured panel. The character of that virtuous Prince, the veneration with which my mother has inspired me for his memory, the orisons which, I know not why, she has enjoined me to pour forth at his tomb, all have concurred to persuade me that somehow or other my destiny is linked with something relating to him.”
“Lord, Madam! how should that be?” said Bianca; “I have always heard that your family was in no way related to his: and I am sure I cannot conceive why my Lady, the Princess, sends you in a cold morning or a damp evening to pray at his tomb: he is no saint by the almanac. If you must pray, why does she not bid you address yourself to our great St. Nicholas? I am sure he is the saint I pray to for a husband.”
“Perhaps my mind would be less affected,” said Matilda, “if my mother would explain her reasons to me: but it is the mystery she observes, that inspires me with this—I know not what to call it. As she never acts from caprice, I am sure there is some fatal secret at bottom—nay, I know there is: in her agony of grief for my brother’s death she dropped some words that intimated as much.”
“Oh! dear Madam,” cried Bianca, “what were they?”
“No,” said Matilda, “if a parent lets fall a word, and wishes it recalled, it is not for a child to utter it.”
“What! was she sorry for what she had said?” asked Bianca; “I am sure, Madam, you may trust me—”
“With my own little secrets when I have any, I may,” said Matilda; “but never with my mother’s: a child ought to have no ears or eyes but as a parent directs.”
“Well! to be sure, Madam, you were born to be a saint,” said Bianca, “and there is no resisting one’s vocation: you will end in a convent at last. But there is my Lady Isabella would not be so reserved to me: she will let me talk to her of young men: and when a handsome cavalier has come to the castle, she has owned to me that she wished your brother Conrad resembled him.”
“Bianca,” said the Princess, “I do not allow you to mention my friend disrespectfully. Isabella is of a cheerful disposition, but her soul is pure as virtue itself. She knows your idle babbling humour, and perhaps has now and then encouraged it, to divert melancholy, and enliven the solitude in which my father keeps us—”
“Blessed Mary!” said Bianca, starting, “there it is again! Dear Madam, do you hear nothing? this castle is certainly haunted!”
“Peace!”
