Free Selected Short Fiction by Charles Dickens

dined alone.
    He withdrew early. Next day he called at the gate, on horseback, to inquire for mistress. He did so two or three times in that week.
    What I observed myself, and what la bella Carolina told me, united to explain to me that master had now set his mind on curing mistress of her fanciful terror. He was all kindness, but he was sensible and firm. He reasoned with her, that to encourage such fancies was to invite melancholy, if not madness. That it rested with herself to be herself. That if she once resisted her strange weakness, so successfully as to receive the Signor Dellombra as an English lady would receive any other guest, it was for ever conquered. To make an end, the Signor came again, and mistress received him without marked distress (though with constraint and apprehension still), and the evening passed serenely. Master was so delighted with this change, and so anxious to conform it, that the Signor Dellombra became a constant guest. He was accomplished in pictures, books, and music; and his society, in any grim palazzo, would have been welcome.
    I used to notice, many times, that mistress was not quite recovered. She would cast down her eyes and droop her head, before the Signor Dellombra, or would look at him with a terrified and fascinated glance, as if his presence had some evil influence or power upon her. Turning from her to him, I used to see him in the shaded gardens, or the large half-lighted sala, looking, as I might say, ‘fixedly upon her out of darkness’. But, truly, I had not forgotten la bella Carolina’s words describing the face in the dream.
    After his second visit I heard master say:
    â€˜Now see, my dear Clara, it’s over! Dellombra has come and gone, and your apprehension is broken like glass.’
    â€˜Will he - will he ever come again?’ asked mistress.
    â€˜Again? Why, surely, over and over again! Are you cold?’ (She shivered.)
    â€˜No, dear- but - he terrifies me: are you sure that he need come again?’
    â€˜The surer for the question, Clara!’ replied master, cheerfully.
    But, he was very hopeful of her complete recovery now, and grew more and more so every day. She was beautiful. He was happy.
    â€˜All goes well, Baptista?’ he would say to me again.
    â€˜Yes, signore, thank God; very well.’
    We were all (said the Genoese courier, constraining himself to speak a little louder), we were all at Rome for the Carnival. I had been out, all day, with a Sicilian, a friend of mine and a courier, who was there with an English family. As I returned at night to our hôtel, I met the little Carolina, who never stirred from home alone, running distractedly along the Corso.
    â€˜Carolina! What’s the matter?’
    â€˜0 Baptista! Oh, for the Lord’s sake! where is my mistress?’
    â€˜Mistress, Carolina?’
    â€˜Gone since morning - told me, when master went out on his day’s journey, not to call her, for she was tired with not resting in the night (having been in pain), and would lie in bed until the evening; then get up refreshed. She is gone! - she is gone! Master has come back, broken down the door, and she is gone! My beautiful, my good, my innocent mistress!’
    The pretty little one so cried, and raved, and tore herself, that I could not have held her, but for her swooning on my arm as if she had been shot. Master came up - in manner, face, or voice, no more the master that I knew, than I was he. He took me (I laid the little one upon her bed in the hotel, and left her with the chamber-women), in a carriage, furiously through the darkness, across the desolate Campagna. When it was day, and we stopped at a miserable posthouse, all the horses had been hired twelve hours ago, and sent away in different directions. Mark me! - by the Signor Dellombra, who had passed there in a carriage, with a frightened English lady crouching in one comer.
    I never heard (said the Genoese courier, drawing a long breath)