but taking care that Girolamo should
see him, as she knew he would run to him. This he immediately did, and
dragged his victim back to his mother in the pavilion which looked out
over the sea. Girolamo was now three years old and a considerable imp;
he displayed Henry proudly and boasted of his catch--while Moravia
scolded him sweetly and asked Henry to forgive them for intruding upon
his solitude.

"You know I understand you must want to be alone, dear friend, and I
would not have come if I had seen you," she said, tenderly, while she
turned and, leaning out, beckoned to the nurse, whom she could just see
across the causeway on the courtyard wall, where the raised parapet was.
Then allowing her feelings to overcome her judgment, she flung out her
arms and seizing Henry's hands, she drew them into her warm, huge muff.

"Henry--I can't help it--!" she gasped. "It breaks my heart to see you
so cold and white and numb--I want to warm and comfort and love you back
to life again----!"

At this minute, the sun burst through the scudding clouds, and blazed in
upon them from the archway; and it seemed to Henry as if a new vitality
rushed into his frozen veins. She was so human and pretty, and young and
real. Love for him spoke from her sparkling, brown eyes. The ascendancy
she had obtained over him on the previous evening returned in a measure;
he no longer wanted to get away from her and be alone.

He made some murmuring reply, and did not seek to draw away his
hands--but a sudden change of feeling seemed to come over Moravia for
she lowered her head and a deep, pink flush grew in her cheeks.

"What will you think of me, Henry?" she whispered, pulling at his grasp,
which grew firmer as she tried to loosen it. "I"--and then she raised
her eyes, which were suffused with tears. "Oh! it seems such horrid
waste for you to be sick with grief for Sabine, who is happy now--and
that only I must grieve----"

Girolamo had seen his nurse entering the far gate and was racing off to
meet her, so that they were quite alone in the pavilion now, and
Moravia's words and the tears in her fond eyes had a tremendous effect
upon Henry. It moved some unknown cloud in his emotions. She, too,
wanted comfort, not he alone--and he could bring it to her and be
soothed in return, so he drew her closer and closer to him, and framed
her face in his hands.

"Moravia," he said, tenderly. "You shall not grieve, dear child--If you
want me, take me, and