breeze. Old Falieri seemed to pay no attention. He was telling
Annunziata, at much length, about the ceremony of the Doge's betrothal
to the sea, when he throws a ring into it from the Bucentoro on
Ascension Day. He spoke of the victories of the Republic, of the time
when the ceremony was first instituted, after the taking of Istria and
Dalmatia, under Peter Urseolus the Second. If the words of the song
made no impression on Falieri, the tale he told was utterly lost on the
Dogaressa. She sate with all her attention fixed upon the sweet tones
floating over the sea. When the song ceased, she gazed before her with
the expression of one who awakes from a dream, and is still striving to
see and understand its images.

"'"_Senza Amare_," she whispered gently. "_Senza Amare_--_non puo
consolare_." Tears, like pearls, rose in her heavenly eyes; sighs
heaved her breast, which rose and fell, oppressed. Still chuckling and
laughing, the old Doge landed with her at the verandah of his house
opposite San Giorgio Maggiore, not observing Annunziata, how she stood
beside him in silence, moved by the dim sensations awaking within her,
her gaze, heavy with tears, fixed upon a distant realm. A young man,
dressed as a boatman, blew a shell-shaped horn, whose tones echoed far
over the waters. At this signal another gondola came up, a man,
carrying a sunshade, and a woman appeared, and, attended by them, the
Doge and Dogaressa went into the palace. The second gondola came to the
shore, and from it there landed Bodoeri and other persons, amongst whom
were merchants, artists, and people of the lower classes even. These
followed the Doge.

"'Antonio could scarcely wait for the next evening, for he expected
some private message from his beloved Annunziata. At last, however,
the old woman came hobbling in, set herself down, coughing, in the
arm-chair, clapped her bony, withered hands two or three times, and
cried--

"'"Ah, Tonino! what has happened to our poor little dove? When I went
to her to-day, she was lying on her cushions, with half-shut eyes,
leaning her head on her arm, neither sleeping nor waking, neither ill
nor well. 'What has befallen you, gracious Lady Dogaressa?' I cried.
'Is it your wound, not quite whole yet, which is paining you?' But she
looked at me with eyes such as I had never seen in her, and scarce had
I peeped into these moist moonbeams than they hid themselves behind
silken lashes, as if amongst dark clouds. And th