aid, each in a separate chamber, surrounded with every means that
could be devised or thought of for their resuscitation. In an
atmosphere glowing with mild warmth, on soft beds they were placed,
inert and white as frozen clay, their condition being apparently so
hopeless that it seemed mere imaginative folly to think that the least
breath could ever again part their set lips or the smallest pulsation
of blood stir colour through their veins. But Morgana never wavered in
her belief that they lived, and hour after hour, day after day she
watched with untiring patience, administering the mysterious balm or
portion which she kept preciously in her own possession,--and not till
the fifth day of her vigil, when Manella showed faint signs of
returning consciousness, did she send to Rome for a famous scientist
and physician with whom she had frequently corresponded. She entrusted
the dispatch of this message to Rivardi, saying--

"It is now time for further aid than mine. The girl will recover--but
the man--the man is still in the darkness!"

And her eyes grew heavy with a cloud of sorrow and regret which
softened her delicate beauty and made it more than ever unearthly.

"What are they--what is HE--to you?" demanded Rivardi jealously.

"My friend, there was a time when I should have considered that
question an impertinence from you!" she said, tranquilly--"But yours is
the great share of the rescue--and your magnificent bravery wins you my
pardon,--for many things!" And she smiled as she saw him flush under
her quiet gaze--"What is this man to me, you ask? Why nothing!--not
now! Once he was everything,--though he never knew it. Some quality in
him struck the keynote of the scale of life for me,--he was the great
delusion of a dream! The delusion is ended--the dream is over! But for
that he WAS to me, though only in my own thoughts, I have tried to save
his life--not for myself, but for the woman who loves him."

"The woman we rescued with him?--the woman who is here?"

She bent her head in assent. Rivardi's eyes dwelt on her with greater
tenderness than he had ever felt before,--she looked so frail and
fairy-like, and withal so solitary. He took her little hand and gently
kissed it with courteous reverence.

"Then--after all--you have known love!" he said in a low voice--"You
have felt what it is,--though you have assumed to despise it?"

"My good Giulio, I DO despise most heartily what the world generally
understands