we are not careful."

"I will go and tell Sister Gabrielle before dinner," said Corona to
Giovanni.

So they left her at the door of her apartment, and she went in. She found
the Sister in an inner room, with a book of devotions in her hand.

"Pray for me, my Sister," she said, quietly. "I have resolved upon a
great step. I am going to be married again."

Sister Gabrielle looked up, and a quiet smile stole over her thin face.

"It is soon, my friend," she said. "It is soon to think of that. But
perhaps you are right--is it the young Prince?"

"Yes," answered Corona, and sank into a deep tapestried chair. "It is
soon I know well. But it has been long--have struggled hard--I love him
very much--so much, you do not know!"

The Sister sighed faintly, and came and took her hand.

"It is right that you should marry," she said, gently. "You are too
young, too famously beautiful, too richly endowed, to lead the life you
have led at Astrardente these many months."

"It is not that," said Corona, an expression of strange beauty
illuminating her lovely face. "Not that I am young, beautiful as you say,
if it is so, or endowed with riches--those reasons are nothing. It is
this that tells me," she whispered, pressing her left hand to her heart.
"When one loves as I love, it is right."

"Indeed it is," assented the good Sister. "And I think you have chosen
wisely. When will you be married?"

"Hardly before next summer--I can hardly think connectedly yet--it has
been very sudden. I knew I should marry him in the end, but I never
thought I could consent so soon. Oh, Sister Gabrielle, you are so
good--were you never in love?"

The Sister was silent, and looked away.

"No--of course you cannot tell me," continued Corona; "but it is such a
wonderful thing. It makes days seem like hundreds of years, or makes them
pass in a flash of light, in a second. It oversets every idea of time,
and plays with one's resolutions as the wind with a feather. If once it
gets the mastery of one, it crowds a lifetime of pain and pleasure into
one day; it never leaves one for a moment. I cannot explain love--it is a
wonderful thing."

"My dear friend," said the Sister, "the explanation of love is life."

"But the end of it is not death. It cannot be," continued Corona,
earnestly. "It must last for ever and ever. It must grow better and purer
and stronger, until it is perfect in heaven at last: but where is the use
of trying to express such