Let
us go away from this wretched England. Let us go to some southern
country where the sun is warm, and the people do not talk of their
money, and there are beautiful things to see and admire. It is ugly and
cold here, and I am weary of it."

She broke off in a sudden fit of sobbing. He took her face gently in his
hands, and held it up to him. It was he, now, who was to play the part
of consoler.

"Margharita, I am a lonely old man whose life is well nigh spent. Yet,
if you will come to me, if you will really live with me, then you will
make my last days happy. When I die all that I have will be yours. It is
settled, is it not?"

Like summer lightning the tempest of her grief died away, and her face
was brilliant with smiles.

"I will never, never leave you, uncle," she cried joyously. "We will
live together always. Oh, how happy we shall be!"

Then she looked at him--looked at his shrunken limbs and worn, pinched
face, and a sudden darkening fire kindled in her face. She stamped her
foot, and her eyes flashed angrily. The sight of him reminded her that,
so far as he was concerned at least, their happiness could not be of
very long duration. The finger of death had laid its mark upon that
ashen gray face. It was written there.

"How I hate them!" she cried. "Those cruel, wicked people, who kept you
in prison all these years. I should like to kill them all--to see them
die here before us. I would not spare one--not one!"

He thrust her away, and started to his feet a changed man. The old fires
had leaped up anew; the old hate, the old desire, was as strong as ever
within him. She looked at him, startled and wondering. His very form
seemed dilated with passion.

"Child!" he cried, "have you ever heard the story of my seizure and
imprisonment? No, you have not. You shall hear it. You shall judge
between me and them. Listen! When I was a young man, Italy seemed
trembling on the verge of a revolution. The history of it all you know.
You know that the country was honeycombed with secret societies, more or
less dangerous. To one of these I belonged. We called our Order the
'Order of the White Hyacinth.' We were all young, ardent and impetuous,
and we imagined ourselves the apostles of the coming liberation. Yet we
never advocated bloodshed; we never really transgressed the law. We gave
lectures, we published pamphlets. We were a set of boy dreamers with
wild theories--communists, most of us. But there was not one w