She could not conceive it possible that Giovanni so loved her as to marry for her sake.

Besides, no one could ever have breathed a word of him in connection with herself--until this abominable anonymous letter was written.
The thought that she might, after all, be the "person very dear to him," the one who "took no interest whatever in him," had nevertheless crossed her mind, and had given her for one moment a sense of wild and indescribable pleasure.

Then she remembered what she had felt before; how angry, how utterly beside herself, she had been at the thought of another woman being loved by him, and she suddenly understood that she was jealous of her.

The very thought revived in her the belief that it was not she herself who was thus influencing the life of Giovanni Saracinesca, but another, and she sat silent and pale.
Of course it was another! What had she done, what word had she spoken, whereby the world might pretend to believe that she controlled this man's actions?
"Fulfilling his engagements," the letter said, too.

It must have been written by an ignorant person--by some one who had no idea of what was passing, and who wrote at random, hoping to touch a sensitive chord, to do some harm, to inflict some pain, in petty vengeance for a fancied slight.