ctly," answered Corona, in a low voice. She was calm enough now.
"He came into my room two hours ago, and suddenly, in conversation, he
became very angry. Then his anger subsided in a moment, and he fell at my
feet."

"It is just as I expected," answered the physician, quietly. "They always
die in this way. I entreat you to be calm--to consider that all men are
mortal--"

"I am calm now," interrupted Corona. "I am alone. Will you see that what
is necessary is done quickly? I will leave you for a moment. There are
people outside."

As she opened the door the gaping crowd of servants slunk out of her way.
With bent head she passed between them, and went out into the great
reception-rooms, and sat down alone in her grief.

It was genuine, of its kind. The poor man's soul might rest in peace, for
she felt the real sorrow at his death which he had longed for, which he
had perhaps scarcely dared to hope she would feel. Had it not been real,
in those first moments some thought would have crossed her mind--some
faint, repressed satisfaction at being free at last--free to marry
Giovanni Saracinesca. But it was not so. She did not feel free--she felt
alone, intensely alone. She longed for the familiar sound of his
querulous voice--for the expression of his thousand little wants and
interests; she remembered tenderly his harmless little vanities. She
thought of his wig, and she wept. So true it is that what is most
ridiculous in life is most sorrowfully pathetic in death. There was not
one of the small things about him she did not recall with a pang of
regret. It was all over now. His vanity was dead with him; his tender
love for her was dead too. It was the only love she had known, until that
other love--that dark and stirring passion--had been roused in her. But
that did not trouble her now. Perhaps the unconscious sense that
henceforth she was free to love whom she pleased had suddenly made
insignificant a feeling which had before borne in her mind the terrible
name of crime. The struggle for loyalty was no more, but the memory of
what she had borne for the dead man made him dearer than before. The
follies of his life had been many, but many of them had been for her, and
there was the true ring in his last words. "To be young for your sake,
Corona--for your sake!" The phrase echoed again and again in her
remembrance, and her silent tears flowed afresh. The follies of his life
had been many, but to her he had been true. The