mongst them a sparkling cut-glass decanter
of yellow Chartreuse. A nun stood ready to pour out the coffee, the
same that had written at the old lady's dictation and held her sunshade
in the morning. She served us with our coffee, then with a low bow
disappeared.

"Sister Therese," remarked the Comtesse, "is a great comfort to me; she
writes all my letters and waits on me as if I were her mother."

At the word "mother" the old lady paused, and I saw her blue eyes fixed
on a distant sail on the lake, with a sad, almost yearning look in them.

But in a moment it was gone. She turned to us, smiling.

"You must take a glass of Chartreuse," she said, filling the tiny
glasses, "it is so good for you. It is a perfect elixir!"

We drank the liqueur more to please her than anything else; then
Dolores rose. I have never seen such a look of pain on her sweet face
as was there then. God send I never see such again!

"No doubt, Madame la Comtesse," she began, "you wish to speak to my
husband alone?"

The old lady glanced up at her for a few moments without speaking,
there was a slightly puzzled look in her kind blue eyes; then, in a
second, this look was gone, and one of deep solicitude and affection
took its place.

It was as if some expression or passing glance on my dear wife's face
had touched a chord somewhere in her nature, perhaps long forgotten.

She put out her slender white hand and drew Dolores down beside her on
to the bench on which she sat; then she put her arm round her and
pressed her to her, as one fondles a child.

"My dear," she said, "between a husband and his wife there should be no
secret. No secret of mine shall divide you two. What I tell to one, I
tell to both. What does it matter? For myself, I shall soon be gone;
for the others, what harm can it bring them?"

We sat in silence, she with her arm round Dolores, her eyes fixed on
the blue lake, a tear trembling in each, and she spoke to us as one
whose thoughts were far away among the people and the scenes she
described. I sat enthralled by every word she uttered.

"My eyes first saw the light," she began, "in a castle among the
mountains around Valoro, one of the seats of my father, the king!"

Though I started at her words, they did not amaze me; I was prepared
for them.

"My mother died when I was ten," she continued. "How I remember her
with her fair curls and blue eyes, they seemed so strange among the
dark-skinned Aquazilians