.

Sometimes she would say to her husband, "I cannot think that he was
guilty: there was some mystery in it." And her husband always laughed,
and said in answer, "He was guilty, be sure: it was I that frightened
him into confession. Those black rats of the Church have livers as white
as their coats are black."

Generosa did not wholly believe, but she thrust the grain of doubt away
from her and played with her handsome children. And, after all, she
mused, what doubt could there be? Did not Don Gesualdo himself reveal
his guilt? and had he not always cared for her? and was not the whole
population of Marca willing to bear witness that they had always
suspected him and had only held their peace out of respect for the
Church?

He himself lived two long years among the galley-slaves of the western
coast: all that time he never spoke; and he was considered by the
authorities to be insane. Then, in the damp and cold of the third
winter, his lungs decayed, his frail strength gave way; he died of what
they called consumption in the spring of the year. In his last moments
there was seen a light of unspeakable ecstasy upon his face, a smile of
unspeakable rapture on his mouth.

"Laus Deus libera me!" he murmured, as he died.

A bird came and sang at the narrow casement of his prison-cell as his
spirit passed away. It was a nightingale,--perchance one of those who
had once sung to him in the summer nights from the wild-rose hedge at
Marca.

A RAINY JUNE.

_From the Prince di San Zenone, Claridge's, London, to the Duchessa
dell'Aquila Fulva, Monterone, near Milano, Italy._

_Carissima Teresa_,--

I received your letter, which is delightful to me because it is yours,
and terrible to me because it scolds me, abuses me, flies at me, makes
me feel like a schoolboy who has had a _saponata_. Yes, it is quite
true. I cannot help it She has bewitched me. She is a lily made into a
woman. I feared you would be angry, especially angry because she is a
foreigner; but the hour of fate has struck. You will not wonder when you
see her. She is as blonde as the dawn and as pure as a pearl. It seems
to me that I have never loved any woman at all in my life before. To
love her is like plunging one's hand in cool spring-water on a midsummer
noon. She is such repose; such innocence; such holiness! In the midst of
this crowded, over-colored, vulgar London life--for it is very vulgar at
its highest--she seems like some angel of purity