Blood had flowed in quarrels about her charms, and she had heard of these encounters with pleasurable excitement.

It had been told of her that on one occasion she had stood by in the disguise of a page and had seen her lover fall.
As is so often the case, she had married the very worst of those who sought her hand.

Why she had chosen Paulo Neroni, a man of no birth and no property, a mere captain in the Pope's guard, one who had come up to Milan either simply as an adventurer or else as a spy, a man of harsh temper and oily manners, mean in figure, swarthy in face, and so false in words as to be hourly detected, need not now be told.
When the moment for doing so came, she had probably no alternative.
He, at any rate, had become her husband, and after a prolonged honeymoon among the lakes, they had gone together to Rome, the papal captain having vainly endeavoured to induce his wife to remain behind him.
Six months afterwards she arrived at her father's house a cripple, and a mother.

She had arrived without even notice, with hardly clothes to cover her, and without one of those many ornaments which had graced her bridal trousseau.

Her baby was in the arms of a poor girl from Milan, whom she had taken in exchange for the Roman maid who had accompanied her thus far, and who had then, as her mistress said, become homesick and had returned.