too."

"Mine?" The eyes grew wide and wondering.

"Don't you see that but for me he would have married you, and that I
have been the cause of a great wrong to you?"

For one instant Regina's face darkened, her brows straightened
themselves, and her lip curled. She remembered how, only two days ago,
in the very next room, Marcello had insisted that she should he his
wife. But as she looked into Aurora's innocent eyes she understood, and
the cloud passed from her own, and the bright smile came back. Aurora
had spoken in the simplicity of her true heart, sure that it was only
the memory of his love for her that had withheld Marcello from first to
last; and Regina well knew that it had always been present with him, in
spite of his brave struggle to put it away. That memory of another,
which Regina had seen slowly reviving in him, had been for something in
her refusal to marry him.

With the mysterious sure vision of those who are near death, she felt
that it would hurt Aurora to know the truth, except from Marcello
himself.

"If you have ever stood between us," she said, "you had the right. He
loved you first. There is nothing to forgive in that. Afterwards he
loved me a little. No one can take that from me, no one! It is mine, and
it is all I have, and though I am going, and though I know that he is
tired of me, it is still more than the world. To have it, as I have it,
I would do again what I did, from the first."

The voice was weak and muffled, but the words were distinct, and they
were the confession of poor Regina's life.

"If he were here," she said, after a moment, "I would lay your hand in
his. Only let me take that memory with me!"

The young girl rose and bent over her as she answered.

"It is yours, to keep for ever."

She stooped a little lower and kissed the dying woman's forehead.

* * * * *

Under the May moon a little brigantine came sailing up to a low island
just within sight of Italy; when she was within half a mile of the reefs
Don Antonino Maresca put her about, for he was a prudent man, and he
knew that there are just a few more rocks in the sea than are in the
charts. It was a quiet night, and he was beating up against a gentle
northerly breeze.

When the head yards were swung, and braced sharp up for the other tack,
and the little vessel had gathered way again, the mate came aft and
stood by the captain, watching the light on the island.

"Are there