Her name suited her admirably for into the artificial life of fashionable society she brought a great natural sweetness of temper, much indulgence for the failings of others, courtesy accorded impartially to high and low, and a most melodious voice.
On hearing Andrea's hackneyed phrases, she exclaimed in graceful surprise-- 'What, have you forgotten Elena so soon ?' Then after a few days of engaging hesitation, it pleased her to yield to his solicitations, and she often spoke of Elena to the faithless young lover, but with perfect frankness and without jealousy.
'But why did she go away sooner than usual this year ?' she asked him one day with a smile.
'I have no idea,' answered Andrea, not without a touch of impatience and bitterness.
'Then it is all over between you--quite over ?' 'For pity's sake, Bianca, let us talk about ourselves,' he retorted sharply.

The subject disturbed and irritated him.
She remained pensive for a moment, as if seeking to unravel some enigma, then she smiled and shook her head with a little fugitive shadow of melancholy in her eyes.
'Such is love!' she sighed, and returned Andrea's kisses.
In her he seemed to possess all those charming women of whom Lorenzo the Magnificent sang: 'And on every side we find, Absence, as men say, estranges, Fancy ranges as the eye ranges, Out of sight is out of mind.
Love departs and is not love: As from sight the eye departs Even so do hearts from hearts; And at other hands we prove Fancies love as the eyes rove, Parted pleasures come again.' When the summer came, and she was on the point of leaving Rome, she said to him, without seeking to conceal her gentle emotion-- 'When we meet again I know you will not love me any more.

That is love.
But think of me always as a friend.' He did not love her, certainly; nevertheless during the heat and tedium of the days that followed, certain cadences of that dulcet voice returned to him like a haunting melody, suggesting visions of a garden, fresh with splashing fountains, where Bianca wandered in company with other fair women playing on the viol and singing as in a vignette of the 'Dream of Polyphilo.' And Bianca passed and was succeeded by others--sometimes two at a time; but it was finally the little ivory Death's-head which had belonged to the Cardinal Immenraet, the funereal jewel dedicated to an unknown Ippolita, that suggested to him the caprice of tempting Donna Ippolita Albonico..