Was it that Prada, the Piedmontese, the Italian of the North, the man of conquest, displayed towards his bride the same brutality that he had shown towards the city he had sacked?
Or was it that the revelation of married life filled Benedetta with repulsion since nothing in her own heart responded to the passion of this man?
On that point she never clearly explained herself; but with violence she shut the door of her room, locked it and bolted it, and refused to admit her husband.

For a month Prada was maddened by her scorn.

He felt outraged; both his pride and his passion bled; and he swore to master her, even as one masters a colt, with the whip.

But all his virile fury was impotent against the indomitable determination which had sprung up one evening behind Benedetta's small and lovely brow.

The spirit of the Boccaneras had awoke within her; nothing in the world, not even the fear of death, would have induced her to become her husband's wife.* And then, love being at last revealed to her, there came a return of her heart to Dario, a conviction that she must reserve herself for him alone, since it was to him that she had promised herself.
* Many readers will doubtless remember that the situation as here described is somewhat akin to that of the earlier part of M.George Ohnet's _Ironmaster_, which, in its form as a novel, I translated into English many years ago.