. "Thou hast said it, Aluisi; this is not the writing
of the king!"

"Nay, beloved Sovereign Lady," the Chamberlain made answer, as he picked
it up, and held it before her; "this is but a memorandum made for your
Majesty's convenience, but attested under the seal of the kingdom. The
original Will is in the keeping of the Lord of the Privy Seals, awaiting
your command. It was thought that your Majesty would wish to see it
before the Council should be assembled."

She understood and bowed her head in silence, while all hope died out of
her face.

Aluisi advisedly used the ceremonious form by which he was accustomed to
address the Queen in public, hoping to hint to her of some necessary
preparation to control the meeting of the Council that could not, in any
event, be long deferred.

They lingered wistfully, seeking vainly for words that might not hurt
her; but Caterina looked at them beseechingly, with dim eyes--her lips
moving without sound.

The Lady Beata understood.

"I go now to pray the dear Christ for thee--the Man of Sorrows," she
said with inexpressible tenderness. "And later--Carinissima--I will come
again, and thou wilt rest."

So young--so sorely stricken--she knelt in the cold moonlight alone--her
hands clasped in passionate repression on her throbbing heart--"Mater
Dei!" she moaned: "Death--and then _this_!--If but it need not have been
told me! If I might but have kept the _memory_ of my happiness!"

Only the stars and the pitying angels looked down on the fierce conflict
of grief and love and disillusion with which her desolate young soul
wrestled alone through the long, midnight vigil. How should she separate
these two beautiful faiths which had been enthroned as one in the happy
depths of her guileless heart, without perilling her very trust in God!

Yet, as the sad day dawned over the hills and sea, she knew that God was
still in His Heaven, behind the clouds--while she clung as a drowning
mariner--the more desperately for her weakness--to the spar of this
faith in the wreck of her happiness, though the love to which her whole
being had moved in rhythmic content was as a lost star, glimmering
uncertainly behind the mists.

But through the desolate night-watches the Lady of the Bernardini in the
ante-chamber of the Queen had been agonizing in prayer for her until
thought was spent; and now she had moved out upon the loggia and stood
there waiting for the dawn that seemed long-deferred, in a