elling on vain
regrets--and then the Lady of the Bernardini had asked,
half-reluctantly:

"How if some Lady of the Cornari went with her?--I--having no daughter
of my own--and loving her well? And--thou and I need not be parted."

"I dared not ask it of thee," he cried fervently--"for it is much. I
dared not tell thee of the Senate's wish to name thee chief Lady of
Caterina's Court."

"The court of the child! The little Caterina!" she exclaimed
impetuously, rising and taking a few steps away from him with the
irresistible impulse of offended dignity.

"I was bidden to lay their desire before thee--if it should be also of
thy will, my Mother; it was not a command," he hastened to assure her.

But she had already conquered herself--being strong as proud, and prompt
in decision, but ruled above all by her deep affections, and she came
back to his side before he had found words with which to propitiate her.

"It was strange to me," she said, "but Venice would be more strange
without my boy. Let us go together."

"Thou canst verily bear to leave it all?" he asked when he could trust
himself to speak.

Her eyes followed the direction of his motion around the vast hall, then
came back to rest upon his face.

"The past is ours," she said, "but not to make us weak. Thy
'might-have-beens' are not less wise for women than for men. I have only
thee."

"San Marco atone to thee for thy sacrifice," he cried devoutly.

VII

Never was a more brilliant pageant imagined to do honor to the symbolic
rite of the _Wedding of the Adriatic_ than the triumphant Signoria had
called forth to speed the young Queen to her distant island.

Never did father more solemnly promise his protection to the child from
whom he was parting, than did Cristoforo Moro, the Serenissimo, pledge
the faith and support of Venetia to the Daughter of the Republic, as
with slow majesty, to the rhythm of an ancient wedding canticle, the
Bucentoro, escorted by all the galleys of the arsenal of Venice, the
mighty galleasses of her patrician merchants and the gondolas of her
nobles, moved forward, beyond the Lido, where the Ambassador Filippo
Podacatharo waited with the fleet of Cyprus--most sumptuously
outfitted--to receive the bride of Janus.

And never sailed fairer maiden, more fearlessly, into the far sea of her
unknown future, flooded with dreams, as with sunshine. Was it only a
glamour, tissued of myth and of legend, that lay on the face of t