His face was ghastly white, save where the tinges of paint made a hideous mockery of colour upon his livid skin.

His parted lips were faintly purple, and his hollow eyes stared wide open at his wife's face, while the curled wig was thrust far back upon his bald and wrinkled forehead.
Corona supported his weight upon one knee, and took his nerveless hand in hers.

An agony of terror seized her.
"Onofrio!" she cried--she rarely called him by his name--"Onofrio! speak to me! My husband!" She clasped him wildly in her arms.

"O God, have mercy!" Onofrio d'Astrardente was dead.

The poor old dandy, in his paint and his wig and his padding, had died at his wife's feet, protesting his love for her to the last.