oward him,
and looked at him for a moment very gently, almost lovingly. Where was
the use of trying to conceal what would not be hidden? Every word he
spoke told of his unchanged love, although the phrases were short and
simple. Why should she conceal what she felt? She knew it was a foregone
conclusion. They loved each other, and she would certainly marry him in
the course of a year. The long pent up forces of her nature were
beginning to assert themselves; she had conquered and fought down her
natural being in the effort to be all things to her old husband, to
quench her growing interest in Giovanni, to resist his declared love, to
drive him from her in her widowhood; but now it seemed as though all
obstacles were suddenly removed. She saw clearly how well she loved him,
and it seemed folly to try and conceal it. As she sat by his side she
was unboundedly happy, as she had never been in her life before: the cool
morning breeze fanned her cheeks, and the music of his low voice soothed
her, while the delicious sense of rapid motion lent a thrill of pleasure
to every breath she drew. It was no matter what she said; it was as
though she spoke unconsciously. All seemed predestined and foreplanned
from all time, to be acted out to the end. The past vanished slowly as a
retreating landscape. The weary traveller, exhausted with the heat of the
scorching Campagna, slowly climbs the ascent towards Tivoli, the haven of
cool waters, and pausing now and then upon the path, looks back and sees
how the dreary waste of undulating hillocks beneath him seems gradually
to subside into a dim flat plain, while, in the far distance, the mighty
domes and towers of Rome dwindle to an unreal mirage in the warm haze of
the western sky; then advancing again, he feels the breath of the
mountains upon him, and hears the fresh plunge of the cold cataract, till
at last, when his strength is almost failing, it is renewed within him,
and the dust and the heat of the day's journey are forgotten in the
fulness of refreshment. So Corona d'Astrardente, wearied though not
broken by the fatigues and the troubles and the temptations of the past
five years, seemed suddenly to be taken up and borne swiftly through the
gardens of an earthly paradise, where there was neither care nor
temptation, and where, in the cool air of a new life, the one voice she
loved was ever murmuring gentle things to her willing ear.

As the road began to ascend, sweeping round the b