you, had suddenly come to
pass-some new glory has been given to the sunshine, some fresh balm to
the air-you feel younger, and happier, and lighter, in the very beat of
your heart-you almost fancy you hear the chime of some spiritual music
far off, as if in the deeps of heaven? You are not at first conscious
how, or wherefore, this change has been brought about. Is it the effect
of a dream in the gone sleep, that has made this morning so different
from mornings that have dawned before? And while vaguely asking yourself
that question, you become aware that the cause is no mere illusion,
that it has its substance in words spoken by living lips, in things that
belong to the work-day world.

It was thus that Isaura woke the morning after the conversation with
Alain de Rochebriant, and as certain words, then spoken, echoed back on
her ear, she knew why she was so happy, why the world was so changed.

In those words she heard the voice of Graham Vane--nor she had not
deceived herself--she was loved! she was loved! What mattered that long
cold interval of absence? She had not forgotten--she could not believe
that absence had brought forgetfulness. There are moments when we insist
on judging another's heart by our own. All would be explained some
day--all would come right.

How lovely was the face that reflected itself in the glass as she stood
before it, smoothing back her long hair, murmuring sweet snatches of
Italian love-song, and blushing with sweeter love-thoughts as she sang!
All that had passed in that year so critical to her outer life--the
authorship, the fame, the public career, the popular praise--vanished
from her mind as a vapour that rolls from the face of a lake to which
the sunlight restores the smile of a brightened heaven.

She was more the girl now than she had ever been since the day on which
she sat reading Tasso on the craggy shore of Sorrento.

Singing still as she passed from her chamber, and entering the
sitting-room, which fronted the east, and seemed bathed in the sunbeams
of deepening May, she took her bird from its cage, and stopped her song
to cover it with kisses, which perhaps yearned for vent somewhere.

Later in the day she went out to visit Valerie. Recalling the altered
manner of her young friend, her sweet nature became troubled. She
divined that Valerie had conceived some jealous pain which she longed
to heal; she could not bear the thought of leaving any one that day
unhappy. Ignor